by wildbow
“I feel like all of this is just leading up to me butchering you.”
“It’s going to happen to some degree,” I said.
“Yeah,” Mabel said. “Let’s get started, then. Do you want drugs? I know they aren’t as effective when the plague sets in, but they’ll help some.”
“I’m resistant to drugs,” I said. “It’s not worth you having to keep pumping me with enough for them to work while trying to avoid killing me, when they won’t even last as long.”
“You’re sure?”
“Pain and I are old acquaintances,” I said, glancing up at Evette.
☙
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in, if you don’t mind your boys half-clothed,” I said.
Every bit of focus I could spare was going toward staying still, my fingers gripping my knees. Blood and sweat ran down my back, and despite Mabel’s efforts to keep on top of it, the fluids had found their way into my butt crack, making me profoundly uncomfortable. I fixed the sheets as best as I could without disturbing Mabel’s work.
The doorknob rattled for a little while before opening.
Otis stood in the doorway, head lowered. Bloody bandages covered most of his arms and hands. Blood had soaked through most of the bandages, and his hands trembled visibly, even with the heavy wrapping.
“Going for a walk,” he said. “Pain’s getting to me. Having a bit of a smoke.”
“I’d ask if you have one to spare, but I don’t think Mabel would want me smoking when it’s hard enough to see everything.”
“Please don’t,” Mabel said, lost in what she was doing. The fingertips of one hand were buried cuticle-deep in and around my shoulder muscles, rooting for what needed to be rooted for.
Otis approached, and with his heavily bandaged hands, he fumbled for the carton, fingers barely moving like they were supposed to, as if he had doll hands and he was trying to function. He found a cigarette and placed it between my lips.
“For later,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. I jerked as Mabel hit a nerve, quite literally.
“Says a lot that they dug some graves in advance, yeah?” Otis asked, in his rough voice.
“Hopefully we won’t need too many of them,” I said.
“Hopefully, Sylvester,” Otis said. He paused, hands tremoring more than before. “Gonna see if I can’t finish the carton. Pain’s pretty bad though. Might have to get down to it before long.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Look after my guys?” he asked.
Mabel’s hands stopped working as she realized what the conversation was about.
“Yeah,” I said. I wished I could say more, but I was a little distracted.
“They’re dumb as sticks and rocks, but they’re strong, and they never complained too much.”
“I’ll look after them, Otis.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rougher than usual. “Thanks.”
“You were pretty badass today,” I said. “Fighting the Mercies like that. Was impressive.”
He nodded, winced in pain, and then silently turned and left the room. It took him two tries to close the door with the bandaged hands.
There wasn’t much for me to watch besides the fires, Evette, Fray, and the dark view out the window. I was able to see, after five or so minutes, Otis lurching his way through the snow, disappearing into the treeline, a dot of orange marking his lit cigarette.
It was forty minutes later that I heard the gunshot, from that same direction. Mabel’s hands jumped at the sound.
When I go, I don’t want to go alone like that, I thought.
“I lost my place,” Mabel said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’ll come back up for air, so to speak, or you’ll find it by accident while working elsewhere. Just make a mental note of it and move on.”
What felt like hours stretched on, and Otis’ gunshot wasn’t the only one heard that night.
☙
Mabel’s scalpel clattered against the desk.
“Done?”
“I don’t even know for sure,” she said. “I can’t tell anymore.”
“You have good eyes and a good memory,” I said. “One of the first things I noticed about you.”
She looked my way and smiled.
They really were quite different. Lillian and Mabel. Somehow I felt like Lillian, in this same situation, would look a bit like the wild, Wyvern-touched Lillian I’d seen in Lugh. More alive, not worn to the nub.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and see this more clearly,” she said. She washed her gloves in chemical, then collected a bowl from the top of the now-dim wood stove.
She daubed at my back, wiping skin clean.
“You have no shortage of students available to grow you some new skin,” she said.
“That’s good,” I said. “This isn’t my first rodeo. You know that story about the man who has his axe head and handle replaced several times over? I’ve gotten myself injured so many times I’ve lost track of what’s still original. I don’t even think my own mother would recognize me.”
“You have a mother?”
“Might. I don’t think she’d recognize me anyhow,” I said. I blinked hard. Sweat running down my face had pooled in my eyes.
“I miss my mother,” Mabel said.
“Write her a letter, then.”
“Not exactly that simple, Sy.”
Somewhere over the course of the night, she had transitioned from the formal Sylvester to ‘Sy’.
“Write it anyway. You don’t have to send it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Possibly.”
She began wrapping me with bandages. I rocked back and forth with the regular, easy pace of it. Periodically she placed cool things against my wounded back, which felt marvelous, and then set it in place with the bandage and gauze.
“When I was getting the bowl of water for cleanup, I asked about Rudy and the others. Rudy was in bad shape to begin with.”
“It didn’t go well,” I said. “I guessed.”
She continued applying the bandage for a moment, then ventured, “Your imaginary friends told you?”
“Just regular old me told me,” I said, my heart heavy. “I’ll address it tomorrow.”
She nodded, eyes downcast. “Can you stand?”
I stood, holding the sheet. It turned out there was very little reason to. The sheer amount of blood on the sheet made it stick to my legs and buttocks.
“Steady?”
“Not really,” I admitted.
“We’ll get you cleaned up,” Mabel said. “Berger finished carving away the growths on his face and made it most of the way through his left hand before he had to defer to outside help. Last I heard, he’s managing.”
I nodded.
“Shirley is mostly fine. She’ll be better when we get her seamlessly patched up.”
“She’s had a hard day,” I said. “Does she have anyone with her?”
“A few people.”
“I owe her a lot,” I said. “Can’t have anything happening to her.”
Mabel nodded.
Then she reached out and touched my cheek.
I moved, and she jumped as though I’d run a voltaic wire through her and thrown the switch.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s a little more odd that you’d do it while I’m bloody like this, but—”
Her eyes were wrenched shut behind the mask. “Please stop talking, please stop talking.”
“It’s fine,” I said, more firmly.
“It’s not. You have Jessie, and I wasn’t thinking, and now I’m embarrassed. Can we just pretend this never happened?”
“We could,” I said. “I owe you for tonight. I want to keep you around.”
“Thank you,” she said. She looked properly mortified, even covered by the suit.
“I’ll clean myself up and get dressed, and I’ll spend the night here, if you deem me cle
ar?”
She nodded very emphatically. “I had a good sense of it by the end, and it didn’t grow in you nearly as quickly as it did in Rudy or any of the others.”
“It never did. I don’t think I was contagious either, or I would’ve spread it to a lot more people while doing the rounds in Tynewear.”
“You’re clear enough to see to Jessie,” Mabel said. The mention of Jessie made the mortification set in once more.
I nodded.
She fled the room, and I used the bowl to clean myself up as well as I was able, scrubbing away where blood had congealed and getting myself as clean as possible. Rather stiffly, wobbling, I put another log on the fire, and I walked over to the window, to look out in the direction of the graves.
I cleaned up, got dressed, and opened the door. Now out of her quarantine suit, Mabel offered me her arm, and we walked to Jessie’s room. I glanced at each room with an open door that we passed, and saw reams of bloody sheets, towels, and tools scattered about.
We reached the room at the end of the hall, above the kitchen. It was the master bedroom, and Jessie was within, sleeping. Someone had kept the fire going.
I brushed fingers through Jessie’s hair. She woke.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re alive.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
Jessie smiled, “Not disappointed.”
“I’ll give you a once-over, but since Mabel and I took a while and you’re not writhing in pain, it looks pretty good.”
Jessie nodded. “Thank you for your work, Mabel.”
The sheriff’s daughter tucked her hair behind the one ear and avoided eye contact.
Jessie’s hand moved in a ‘question’ gesture.
“Mabel got affectionate,” I said. “Now she’s embarrassed.”
If the moment earlier had been like activating a voltaic current, this was like a slick of oil being lit on fire. Slow at first, as it set in and built up steam, with an explosive finale.
“You said you wouldn’t—!”
“I said we could pretend it never happened. But we aren’t going to. That’d just be a festering seed of badness that spoiled things on some front. Better to have it in the open.”
“That’s not your decision to make!” Mabel said, incensed and alarmed. “It’s not the time for it! People died tonight!”
“And all of that is negativity that gets tied up in the badness,” I said. “No. It’s—”
Jessie put her hand on my face, shushing me.
“Don’t run away, Mabel,” Jessie said.
“I just touched his face. I—”
“Stay,” Jessie said. “I don’t mind, whatever it was. I might feel left out if it kept going and Sy ignored me, but I don’t mind for now. Sy’s right, it would be ugly if you left and spent the night agonizing over it. Stay and talk.”
“Talk?”
“Keep us company tonight. You have to check on Sy regularly throughout the night, don’t you?”
Mabel, as if looking for a way out, said, “You could—”
“Theoretically,” Jessie said. “But while I’m happy for Sy to work on me, I couldn’t do it for him. That’s not a memory I want in my head.”
“It’s why I asked you,” I told Mabel.
Mabel looked defeated.
“Just look away while he checks on me. That’s all I ask.”
“Sit,” I instructed. “End of the bed there. Tell us about the pheromone project.”
Mabel sat, looking far from comfortable, as if she’d bolt at any second.
☙
Mabel snored. Her face pressed in between my shoulder and the pillow, seeking refuge from the light of morning that had streamed into the room some time ago. She’d pulled off the bits of clothing that were uncomfortable to sleep in and settled in beneath the covers, pressed against me.
Jessie was on the other side of me, fast asleep in that Jessie way. Dead to the world. I’d wondered for some time how she would sleep. Mary had always slept with her back to me, or on her back, one arm against mine. Rigid, but there. Girly to every sense, from the flowery smell of her to the rough lace and just how nice she’d looked with her head on the pillow. Lillian had clung to me like I was the only thing keeping her from drowning, warmer than anything.
Jessie seemed very content to be touching me. One hand outstretched, fingers intertwined with mine. She would wake up now and then, check, and reach out for me if we’d broken away at some point in the night. I was a light enough sleeper that I was aware every time it happened.
Looking at her sleep, I knew there wasn’t anyone or anything I wanted to protect quite so much.
It was a warm, pleasant now that couldn’t last.
I felt a chill and stirred, which made both girls stir on either side of me.
Fray was there, in her abstract glory, wearing her black lab coat. Standing behind her were the Lambs. I might have summoned them by thinking of them like I had. Though I hadn’t been thinking of Duncan and Ashton. They were joined by Mary, Helen, and Lillian.
None of them are wearing black today, I thought, except for Fray. Still trying to figure out that pattern.
Mary stepped forward a little. Lillian wouldn’t look at me. A return to the days after I’d just left.
“I’ve got to ask, what’s with the color of the dresses?” I asked.
“That’s really not what you should be focusing on,” Mary said.
“It means something,” I said. “Like for one thing, you seem a lot more pleasant sometimes.”
Mary reached into her jacket and pulled out a pistol.
“A lot more pleasant,” I said. “I guess this is where I pay for that time I asked for yesterday? Another mutiny? A little more painful than the last?”
“Something like that,” Mary said.
“Thank you for the help earlier,” I said. “I did appreciate it.”
“You noticed?” Duncan asked.
“Huh?” I asked, back.
Mabel stirred beside me.
“Shh,” I said, giving Mabel’s head a pat. “I think Mary and the other Lambs just wants to go for a ride on the Sylvester train.”
Mabel made a curious sound. She opened her eyes just in time to see Mary aiming for my kneecap. I, meanwhile, was wondering why Fray had disappeared from the group.
Mabel realized what she was looking at, startled and cried out in alarm, which startled me, and I moved just in time to avoid having the bullet strike home. Feathers flew everywhere.
Previous Next
Lamb (Arc 16)
“Done hunting Sylvester?” Abby asked.
“No,” Ashton said. He sat beneath a tree, half of him facing the local Academy, half of him facing wilderness. “Sylvester is still ‘at large’, as they say it.”
Abby nodded. She shifted Quinton around so the arm that had been taking most of the weight wasn’t, anymore. She wore a green and white dress and a short jacket that had fur trim on the hood and down the front.
The Lambs had been tracking both Sylvester and Fray, moving to key locations, with the younger Lambs remaining behind as a kind of bait and stalling tactic. When the area was vetted, the younger Lambs would catch up, they’d be in the same place for a little under a week, and then the Lambs would be off again.
“What were you doing?” Abby asked.
“Thinking,” Ashton said. He hadn’t been, exactly, but he had learned that if he said the truth it often bothered or confused people. He had been disassembling, looking at the world and dividing it into its constituent elements, decided by color.
He had also been disassembling people. That was a more intensive process that took up more of his brain. He’d taken the clothes off, with his head, and left them walking and standing around, then tried to determine what people looked like with no clothes at all. He worked out what they looked like beneath the clothes, disassembled those things, and turned every one of the dozens of people he could see into an organized row, with the clothes at one end and the
lymphatic system at the other. He imagined doing things like stabbing people in various places and then worked out the effects that followed, along each of the layers, from bloodstains on the clothes and underclothes to nervous signals and disruption to the lymphatic system. He imagined burns and how they would work, and he imagined his pheromones and tried to figure out how the body would react.
Talking about disassembling people wasn’t good conversation, he’d learned. Most others were bothered. Even Abby usually didn’t really want to talk about it.
“You spend a lot of time sitting and thinking,” Abby said.
“I’m good at it,” Ashton said.
Quinton bleated, walking forward and tugging against the leash that Abby held, drawing nearer to Ashton. Ashton released a puff of good feeling and gave Quinton pats.
“What were you thinking about?” Abby asked.
Ashton had already worked out an answer for this kind of question. Telling the truth was rarely good, so he supplied something else. “My creators told me I needed to practice abstract thinking instead of using the building blocks I’ve been given. They asked me what Good Simon book I would write if I had to write one. I’m supposed to think of things that I had trouble with and then figure out how to write it.”
“Did you figure it out?” Abby asked.
“I don’t think so. I think my problem is that I’m not bad at anything.”
“You’re bad at a lot of things, Ashton,” Abby said.
“Okay. You’re allowed to say so. But to me, I was very good at everything I needed to be good at from the beginning. Sleeping, eating, drinking, walking, even talking. Talking was hard.”
“You’re setting the bar rather low there, Ashton,” Abby said.
She took a seat beside Ashton. He was sitting beneath the largest tree on the campus, a blanket laid out beneath him as if for a picnic, another blanket on his lap.
“The bar wasn’t even set when I started. The Ashton before me didn’t even live. You started out with a good bit of human. I started from the very beginning and I think I’m pretty happy having made it this far.”