Fashioned from curled rinds of flesh, twined sinew, dry and cracking. Sheaves of viscera rustle and flutter through her body in a breeze of movement; flakes and dust sift loose.
She has taken an eye.
Look there.
The eye whispers; she can hear its voice, sibilant and moist, from where it rests in the hollow above one cheek. There is a sodden weight to the thing, cradled in thirsty bone. It pivots in the socket, dilates.
Look--sstop. Tracks. Trackss.
The eye is lonely. It can't be trusted, she knows this. But there is a kind of game to it; the eye must be mostly truthful if it is to have any influence at all.
She shuffles onward.
-
Her memory is a palimpsest of traces and impressions, each moment scrawled atop that which came before. She can make out only the past few days before the lines fade into a vague wash of smudged graphite. She does not remember how she acquired the eye, but she is sure it does not belong to her--it has not begun to wither or rot.
It mutters and plots when it thinks she is not listening. It hums snatches of unfamiliar melodies as it drifts into sleep.
There are corpses here, laboring beside the tracks. They wield sledges and pry bars, pull out the ties, cart off segments of rail in long wagons harnessed to great oozing mounds of fresh muscle. The muscle has been harvested in thick strips, lashed onto frameworks of scrap iron and animal bone. Here and there the end of such a component protrudes from among the ropes of raw meat, glistening.
The sun will be gone sssoon,
it warns.
The corpses do not react to her approach, except occasionally to nudge at her with moldering muzzles as she passes, or turn yawning nasal cavities in her direction and huff like hounds. She ignores them, makes her way to a loaded and sagging wagon, seats herself among the lengths of old steel. The wood creaks and rocks beneath her as the bound muscle lumbers into motion. Darkness is falling. A lullaby echoes faintly inside her skull, like a dream.
-
The rail is being transported back along the inflamed seam of earth where the tracks have been dismantled. At one point her wagon rolls past the rusting hulk of a derelict engine, cast up now on a low hummock like a beached ship, overgrown with reeds and creepers.
The eye reports sight of small, scrabbling movements in the shadows of the ruin, and sharp-featured skulls peering out from the hollows.
Scraps of tattered flesh hang from them like hair,
it tells her,
fluttering in the wind.
-
It is dark again before the wagon rumbles to a stop. At first there is stillness, as if the muscle has simply ceased to function in mid-stride. Then, sounds. Light footfalls pepper the ground. And something with a heavier tread, drawing near; she can feel the vibration carry up through the wheels. Rail shifts and settles beside her.
The eye is trembling.
Light, light,
it pants.
Suddenly the rear gate drops open with a crash, and some massive, powerful thing begins to scoop up the rail in careless armloads. She is jostled roughly as loose lengths of steel tumble around her. There is a ratcheting snap from one leg, crushed beneath the segments; a sensation like ripping canvas as bone grinds in the socket and shivers apart.
She clutches at the wagon and pulls, but she is caught fast. Seconds later the heavy steps return. She is seized along with the rail, lifted into the air. She flails her arms, claws at the steel with hands of bone and nail and gristle, but the thing seems unaware of her efforts.
Light!
The eye suddenly freezes.
It's fire--no, it's--they're smelting the steel, smelting the ssteel...
She feels it, now. The heat is palpable; acrid drafts blow through the hollows and voids that riddle her body, and singe the frayed edges of her parchment skin. Desperation is taking hold. Something buried is rising up; something forgotten is beginning to show through the smears and scratchings. Her jaw creaks open and she draws breath, working her rib cage like a bellows. A rattling hiss emerges. She knots a fist of leathery muscle in her throat, drives the breath through more forcefully.
She screams.
The sound rings through the air, cutting the din of work and motion, and as it slowly dies away a murky hush settles down in its place. She senses an unknown number of heads turning in her direction. The eye moves restlessly, but seems reluctant to break the silence.
She can hear footsteps. They are unhurried, and uneven; lightweight, but not skeletal. She can hear the pads of flesh make contact with rough stone, where bone would skitter or scrape. She is surprised by the touch of fingers, and almost flinches away. They are soft, warm. Mysterious. They rest delicately on her face, for a moment, in stark contrast with her own coarse, brittle hide.
There is a continuous flow of small, subtle sounds from this creature--a muffled thrum like rushing liquid, the susurrus of rhythmic respiration. Then, a voice: "I can't believe..."
Pause.
"You don't remember, do you?"
She feels a slight quivering, and realizes the eye is laughing. Or weeping.
-
He is a rarity. A living man.
He is a symphony of motion. Tiny movements, shifts and vibrations. He moves a hand, taps a foot. Turns his head. He breathes. Always, he breathes. The eye lingers on him for long minutes; it follows his flickering fingers, travels up and down the length of his body, studies the curves and planes of his odd, elastic skin.
It tells her of all these things and more, but it will not speak of his face. It refuses to meet his gaze.
"You have become shy," he says. "You must trust me when I say it was not always so."
The living man has an ornate lockbox on his desk. He turns an intricately wrought key and the lid jumps with an audible click.
Pieces of glasss,
says the eye,
filed smooth around the edges, and chiseled into delicate shapes. He is handling the objects with care; he cradles one in his palm, lays a finger upon another... He is pondering.
"I am not the man I was," he says, removing a translucent object. He rolls up his sleeve, applies a sharp point to his arm. The eye watches in fascination as the vessel slowly fills with crimson fluid. "I am more."
He approaches slowly, glass in hand. His breath quickens as he draws near, briefly stops as he lays a palm on her shoulder. The warmth of his touch is strange and compelling; it stirs old memories, raises fleeting emotions. She craves it, despite the sound of brittle skin crackling beneath the light pressure of his fingertips.
"I am..." She is trying the words. Tasting them. They whistle through broken teeth, flat, toneless; they are drawn thin, past any sense of meaning. "Mmorr..."
"Yes," he whispers.
He sprinkles a few drops onto one hand, and reaches toward her. His touch is warm and moist; the liquid sinks quickly into her flesh. There is a dark smudge now, just above her navel.
A curious twisting sensation is beginning to take hold, as of viscera and musculature shifting. Veins and arteries long unused, dry as old twine, seem to stir and creep like worms in warm earth. She touches her belly, lightly, with the tips of her fingers. Like writing in the dust.
The man takes her hand, drawing it aside. His other hand he lays between her legs, and where he touches her, there is a rustling sensation like a breeze passing through her body. It feels as though her flesh is parting before his fingers, folding away like the onion skin pages of a well read volume. Then there is heat, spreading out low in her abdomen. And moisture, seeping through desiccated tissue.
"See, now?" The man is close; his voice moves against her skin, warm as blood.
"You can remember this, I think," he says, moving his fingers gently. They feel hot, burning her insides. Hot and slick within her. The blood, she realizes. He is applying his blood inside her body. The heat of it is creeping into her hollows and empty places. Her flesh begins to soften in his hands like warming clay.
She feels her lips part, and then a gurgling moan escapes her throat as he palpates her more deeply, working the revitalizing serum into her. The memory returns. It is her vulva he is working this lifeblood into. Her leathery labia he is parting with his fingers. The deep opening within, that he is probing with hot, pulsing digits. She feels a flowing inside her. Her inner canal moistens at his touch.
