The next day, Maise dropped me off at work just as Chris arrived in his car. He stepped out wearing a purple knee length skirt with black tights and ankle boots and a close fitting black top, accessorised with silver bangles and necklace. He'd sprayed his hair, put on a little makeup and looked completely comfortable, as if he was showing us his true self for the first time. Maise ran up and hugged him.

"Finally!" she said. "You look great, hun!"

As we headed up to Wilco's workshop, I asked Chris about preferred pronouns.

"I like being treated as a girl," he replied, "but I don't want it to be a big deal. I'm still the same Chris you've always known and I've always admired how you carried yourself as a masculine woman."

A lot of people might have been insulted by that, but Chris knew me well. I have always been proudly butch and often imagined myself as a man, but fully transitioning into an actual bloke? Nah, not me. I wasn't prepared to do that just because society says I don't woman properly.

The jury was still out on Chris. He had a feminine side you could see from space and might well be a girl trapped in a boy's body, but he cared so much about accommodating the people around him that he kept that girl locked away. We agreed to carry on pretty much as before, but I wouldn't have been surprised if our kid sister became an actual sister before too long.

When we got to the workshop, it turned out Chris had been a busy girl since yesterday and was eager to show us his homework.

"I was thinking about Sadie Coils and how we're going to make her come to life just like you managed with that frog," he said. "So I did some googling on snake robots, found a video on how to make a simple one, realised I had the parts in my junk box and knocked this together."

He took out a chain of little flat trucks about forty centimetres long and set it on the table. The head was powered with two small motors attached to wires leading to a simple control box Chris held in his hand. The little snakebot trundled happily around the table as he sent power to the wheels.

"If I'd had more time, I'd have motorised each section and got them working in series," said Chris. "That would require a lot more power, but I'm getting to understand the principles."

Wilco was impressed.

"Very good," he said. "Let me show you mine".

It turned out that Wilco had two prototypes on the go. One was a train-style snakebot like Chris's, but larger and with each section powered by motorised wheels. The other looked like a long green rubber tube.

"Wheels are still the easiest way to move a snakebot," said Wilco, "but you're limited to ground travel. Another method is to use the way the sections move in relation to each other, but that requires a bit more engineering."

He handed me the green tube.

"This is a simple constrictor," he said. "I can't make it move like a snake yet, but I am thinking of making these into plant vines. This would work great as part of the Madagascar tree."

I inspected the end of the tube and found a discrete button. As I pushed it, the tube began to move, sensing and wrapping around my arms. The flailing end made contact with my thigh and immediately began wrapping itself around me in tight coils. Soon I was held fast, wrapped from thigh to shoulder in writhing, tightening loops. They weren't strong enough to crush or hurt me, but they were constricting my breath and holding me firmly.

"The algorithm for that is actually quite simple," chatted Wilco. "Each section has a set of sensors all around, when it makes contact with something it moves in that direction. Follow that rule along the line and you have a constrictor."

"That's great," I said, struggling for breath. "How do you turn it off?"

Wilco came over, found the button I'd pressed and hit it twice more. The coils gradually disengaged, freeing me from their grasp.

"So, as you can see, we have bits of technology coming along," he said. "But putting it all together to make a person-eating snake is hard. We can do flexible skin, ground motion and coils, but not all at once."

Chris was grinning ear to ear, I could see he couldn't wait to get working on this. Wilco and Chris bonding over robotics was great, but I couldn't keep up with all the technical talk and was starting to feel like a third wheel. I asked if I could leave them to work on Sadie while I went to talk with Uncle Morbid about Debs' bread slicer swansong request.

—

"I think that sounds like a great idea," Uncle Morbid said as I laid out Debs' concept. He took out a notepad and began making sketches.

"The actual slicing part is easy; as she said, it's really just a row of jigsaw blades like the one Maise used to cut you up. The idea of her being inside a loaf of bread, that makes things interesting. Are we talking about a human sandwich here, or does she want to be actually baked into a loaf?"

That took me by surprise.

"Is that an option?" I asked.

"There are ways and means," said Uncle Morbid. "Let's go to the library, I'll buzz Scott to meet us there."

The Morior Studios library was a dusty, vintage looking room with bookcases filled up to a high ceiling. It had never occurred to me to explore what books were in there – in truth it looked like just another room to be used as a filming location – but it turned out to be full of old books on strange legends, stage and movie effects and mystic arcana. The book Uncle Morbid picked out was by Harry Houdini, Miracle Mongers and their Methods.

"There was an act performed back in Houdini's time that fell by the wayside in the years since," he explained. "The heat resistors. People who would climb into ovens to be baked alongside food and livestock, then emerge unscathed while everything they went in with was fully cooked".

"Sorry, livestock? Don't you mean meat?"

Uncle Morbid coughed.

"Meat and livestock," he said. "One of the reasons they stopped performing this act is the level of animal abuse involved. Also it was surprisingly boring watching a closed oven door."

He found the relevant chapter in the book and showed me the text and illustrations.

"The basic idea is that they would find a spot at the bottom of the oven where the temperature wasn't as hot, all the food being cooked would be placed on high shelves where the hot air rose to. They'd still need to breathe cool air, so they'd have have some kind of air pipe feeding in – Chabert used his as a speaking tube to talk to the audience from inside the oven. My idea is that if we wrap you in wet dough at the bottom of the loaf, you'd be insulated at the bottom while the top rises and bakes. Then we take the whole thing out and put it through the slicing machine."

"You mean, Debs would be insulated at the bottom," I corrected him.

"Of course we'll be testing it on you first," said Uncle Morbid. "I thought you knew that."

At that point Scott arrived in the library. Uncle Morbid explained the whole idea and they put together a list of the necessary equipment. It barely surprised me to learn that they had the parts to build a suitably sized oven and metal tin – Morior Studios was like the Bat Utility Belt when it came to crazy inventory requests.

For the recipe we'd use to bake a person-size loaf of bread, we went to the kitchen laboratory at the back of the house where all the fake blood, oil and other special effects liquids we used were prepared. This was the domain of Craig and Rebecca, a pair of chemistry experts who I knew by reputation and had seen working on angel duty at the Masquerade, but this was the first time we'd been properly acquainted.

I didn't know at that time whether Craig and Rebecca were a couple (I later found out they were actually married), but they were definitely a double act. Rebecca was a frizzy redhead who enthused over every word she spoke, Craig a cheery chappie who matched her energy every step of the way. If circumstances were different, this pair would have made great children's TV presenters.

"That's an interesting idea", said Rebecca as we laid out the concept. "Does the bread need to be edible once it's baked?"

"There's no real reason it should be," said Uncle Morbid. "We just need to be able to slice it, and even then only the top and edges."

"We'll want a crust then", said Craig. "You don't really want to be using yeast, though. Not only would you need to prove it before baking, it wouldn't be good for the person being baked inside."

"So we make soda bread," said Rebecca. "Bit of bicarb, water and flour, maybe a little thickener, mix it all up and into the oven."

We would need to order in the ingredients for the bread dough, which would take a couple of days to be delivered while Craig and Rebecca worked on the recipe. Scott went back to his workshop to work on the slicing machine while I went back to rejoin Chris and Wilco in the Jungle.

When I got back to the workshop they weren't there. There was a table overflowing with notes, concept drawings and circuit diagrams with a yellow note addressed to me sitting on top.

LEXIE, WE'VE GONE OVER TO SADIE'S CAVE. MEET US THERE. CHRIS & WILCO

The note was signed off with a cartoon sketch of a happy snake licking its lips.

I set off through the woods, past the swamp area. I saw Big Gulp the bullfrog sitting stock still behind his lilypad and wondered if he was primed and ready like when he swallowed Chris.

When I reached Sadie's cave there was still no sign of my two colleagues. Looking down into the pit I noticed that Sadie the Snake had moved forward out of the cave, laying still just below where I stood.

Suddenly the creature began to stir, moving just a little at first as if I was imagining it, then more forcefully. Sadie's head rose from the ground and she reared up, her huge head coming to rest just in front of me.

I decided not to notice the barely visible array of fishing wire, or the bushes either side where something was moving.

"Hello, Sadie," I said loudly. "My, how you've grown."

Sadie began to slowly open her mouth, showing me a pink, slimy maw heading into a dark tunnel.

"Do you want me to look in there?" I cried out theatrically. "My, what a big mouth you have!"

One of the bushes audibly suppressed a smirk.

I bent forward into the serpent's mouth, as I did so I felt the jaws close around me, causing me to fall forward face first. The interior of the mouth was lubricated with a slimy liquid, so I slid head first down the snake's body, which stretched out around me as I descended. Then I came to rest on what had to be the ground, compressed on all sides by the flexible elastic body of the snake, the slime soaking me to the skin as I lay there in the darkness. Well, that's me eaten, I thought. I wonder how long they'll leave me here?

I lost track of time waiting, but after what turned out to be just a few minutes there was a sudden beam of sunlight and Sadie's skin unzipped to reveal Chris and Wilco looking in at me. They helped me up out of Sadie's slimy belly.

"After you left we had a brainstorming session and realised we were completely over-engineering this whole snake thing," said Wilco. "Actually it was Chris's idea – I'd gotten so used to working alone to make these models self working that I'd forgotten all about basic puppetry that could be operated by the two of us together."

"I guess you saw the wires?" said Chris.

"Yes, but they were easy enough to ignore," I said. "Wow. You two really are a team, aren't you?"

We headed back to the workshop, where I could shower off and get a change of clothes. On the way, Wilco told us a little more about Morior Studios, the Mortal Masquerade and what we knew about this plane of reality.

"As you're aware, Uncle Morbid and Susan are custodians, the beings that run this place. I don't know for sure, but I think Scott is too. None of them will tell you anything you're not ready to work out on your own, I don't think they're even able to. But I will tell you what I know so far."

"Where are we exactly?" asked Chris.

"Pretty much the world we left, but seen from another angle and inhabited by the spirits of the dead," said Wilco. "It's a kind of ghost dimension, a second chance to figure out all the things about yourself that you didn't when you were alive."

"What's Susan's deal?" I asked. "She had this whole oblivious boss act going on, but then when she showed up to bury us in cement she went full psycho."

"Did Uncle Morbid give you the speech about final destinations and being able to pass on properly when the time comes?" asked Wilco.

"Yes, he told us all that," said Chris.

"Well, I know this mostly from hearsay because it happens out of sight, but when and if that time comes and you decide to die properly, it is Susan that will dispatch you," said Wilco.

"You mean she's Death?" I asked.

"You could say that," he replied. "Actually, it makes sense that Death would look less like a walking skeleton and more like a human resources manager. As for why she went psycho, I'm not certain yet but I think it's part of a test to see if you choose life. If you'd actually been ready to die in that cement you would have, tube or no tube".

"Does everyone come here when they die?" asked Chris.

"That I haven't fully figured out yet," Wilco answered. "I think there could be multiple versions of this reality, depending on what you need to work through. Do you have someone in mind?"

"My parents," said Chris. "I remember them, but feel like I can't see them. When they die will they come here, or are they gone forever?"

Wilco was silent for a moment.

"That I do not know," he said quietly.