You had given yourself four days.
This was not as arbitrary a measurement as it may seem - that was your estimate of the time it would take until your journey reached an end unchosen, until hunger and thirst dragged you down into the ditch for good. The group of small, thatched buildings that passes for a town here is too widely-dispersed to have gutters where refuse might be thrown - half-rotted fruit, scraps of silverskin, boiled carcasses with bones still full of marrow - and you do not know which of the foreign plants that grow here can be eaten.
And it has now been three and a half of those days, and you have found nothing. The people here - from what you have seen of them, hiding among the trees and behind outbuildings to avoid their blades - are farmers and herders, pale-haired and stocky. They herd around deer, and sheep, and goats, chop wood with muffled blows; none appear prepared to don armour, draw sword, and proclaim themselves the liberation of mankind.
You pull your arms more tightly around your knees. At least the river is familiar - slow and turbid as the one that was the aorta of your homeland, if fringed in hoarfrost rather than mud. A dry leaf drifts into sight, and continues out of it. Not even a breath of wind stirs the heavy-bowed heads of the fen-grasses.
Understand - it had not been clear, the vision. A flicker of scents and tastes, a garnet-coloured sunrise, jubilations and libations and it had wheeled like a hawk that sights a rat amid the stubble and fallen in a rain of glassy ornaments to show you a slight figure pinned between the teeth of the mountains and the teeth of the stars, and where those jaws had pierced them they only grinned and pried them apart again, blood running down to flood the world and finally, finally clear the taint of human doom -
Or, rather, would have. For now all your strength is spent, and you have found only winter and wasteland, and the water, limned in ice.
Somehow, you feel, you should have known.
You have been told that it is not painful. That the cold does more work than the water, sucking the strength from your marrow so gently that you do not notice it happening, and it will bear you into death as easily as drifting into sleep. Perhaps those you have loved will wait there for you - your family, and perhaps they will kiss you as when you were young and not yet broken, wipe the scars from your arms in their embrace.
Or perhaps there is simply nothing beyond it. But even that - what remains for you in life?
You go to stand.
“Uncle?” A shadow falls over you, and you look up. “Are you well?”
The man standing there is - well, you are tempted not even to call him that, he is so young. A quiver hangs at one hip and a slender hunting-bow in one hand - you do not know what game can be found in these forests, nor whether it is more typical, here, to hunt for meat. In your home, those who could not afford livestock were pitied, considered poorest of the poor.
He won't have any struggle, in handing down your mandated punishment. Those arrowheads are probably quite sharp. And besides, at such close range it wouldn't even matter if they were but fire-hardened points - he could pierce you through and leave you with the terrible task of breaking the embedded shaft, pulling it from your own body. Although - if you are fortunate, if his aim were to waver, even slightly - that same closeness of range could be a mercy instead, could ensure he fully cut your veins and you bleed out even more quickly than drowning.
But the man does not, as he is required to, draw any weapon. Instead, he drops down to a crouch, bringing his face level with yours. Pity contracts his face as his gaze ranges you over; then he holds out a hand, palm-up, like an offering to a spooked foal. “Come with me,” he says. “We can give food. Shelter. We can help you. Let me help.”
You ought to fight. You know it would only delay your death. But the exhaustion has stripped you bare of all but instinct, and to your everlasting shame that only obeys orders, and since nothing matters anyway it doesn't bother to fight as the man's hand closes around your wrist and pulls you on.

The use-trail - so lightly trod that you can only mark it squinting sideways - spills out into a clearing in which an encampment is set up, with a disturbing quantity of people. They must be relatives, or at least fairly close kin, for all share the same look as the bowman - light skin, ochre-coloured hair, clothed in hides and heavy undyed wool. You are led over to a domed and bark-thatched shelter, and he drops your hand to speak to a woman plaiting a length of cord, her hair similarly braided into a high coil on her crown. You do not understand the language, but the gestures and facial expressions indicate well enough that he wants her assistance.
They make you sit down upon a bedroll, give you water and some kind of sour green broth. Don't, you want to tell them, don't waste your time, your energy, your resources. Not on a madman such as I, for you have poured out all of yourself, sacrificed all hope of ever finding even a sliver of safety, abandoned your homeland - and for what? Nothing. A dream that burned off like mist in the harsh glare of waking life, that you'd only believed in because you wanted it so badly - like the way you could convince yourself, in the middle of the dry season, that you had heard a drop of rain.
They seem to take your inability to argue as implicit consent to try and physic you as well. The bowman has to wet your clothing to make it come free from the scabs, and the braided-woman gasps. For a moment, you are confused at her surprise, and then remember that other people don't see such things every day, and might feel pity.
But then she pulls something musky-scented from a pouch at her belt and there are suddenly too many hands and you can't, you can't let them do this, can't let them feign their kindness and tell you it will be all right when you know it won't, it never can be, you never can be - you jerk to your feet, make to flee.
The man catches you before you fall, drags you back down. “Don't be afraid,” he says. “Stay. Stay. It's safe. Stay.”
No, you want to say, I cannot, I must not, don't you see there's nothing left to me but dying?
Please just leave me to it.

It is only when you wake that you realize you may have stumbled into a warband. Everyone in Daevon has, if not encountered, at least heard of such groups - those who cannot bear the rule of the Daeva, who wander in the wilderness like wild beasts.
Every day for five days, seven, two whole hands full, you tell yourself you must leave. For one thing, such groups tend not to have long lifespans - a band that lasts until the next season is considered tenacious, when gossiped about with cautious disinterest. (You remember your sister laughing, taunting that if one of her friends was that worried about a cousin who had joined one she would go and find him for her, would learn all their secret roads through the jungle. To creep about as silently as an owl, she had said, and they would never know I was there. I could do as I wished, then. I wouldn't have to pay taxes - and she had been grinning even as her friend hastily shushed her, saying that the paying of taxes was right and good and the soldiers skilled enough to find anyone.
You wonder what she would think, had she lived, to see you now.)
They treat you with a vague sort of acceptance, as though you are of no more import than a pitch-sealed basin of water. The bowman grins sharply at you each time he passes, but nothing else; the braided woman tries her best to make conversation, but between the two of you you speak an average of less than one language, and she eventually gives up.
(And for the second thing, your presence shortens lifespans dramatically.)
Most groups nonetheless have a single leader, the first seditioner to forge her pruning-hook into a spear and her sickle into a sword and raise them against the servants of your matriarch. You spend the time trying to work out who it is, for this one. The braided woman? But her crown is ungolden - it may symbolize something else. There is another woman who is armoured, in patches of beaten copper sewn to a jerkin, but none obey her requests more than any others.
Or perhaps she is not yet near, but perhaps - but no, no, you are only tricking yourself. There is no sense of expectation floating between them all like spiderwebs. She is not just going to ride up, armed with bronze and haloed like the sun, having merely been away managing another faction in her following. That is a beautiful concept, but it is a fiction.
(By now you know not to trust your expectations, who have misfortune's eye ever turned upon you. You had expected the tax-collectors would take your neighbour's horse to satisfy her debt, not her son at swordpoint; it was not so. You had expected that when you called this out as not only savage, but uselessly so, someone would listen; it was not so.
And you had expected no-one had seen that last unlawful act - the thief-girl chained to the pillar at the crossroads, bare flesh scored with whip-marks and inscriptions of her crimes. What had struck you most had been the bloody cracks on her lips, already attracting flies, and you had pulled your waterskin from your belt and crouched down and gently held it to her mouth. She had only suckled instinctively at it, but you had not hoped for more - only that you could relieve this single atom of her suffering, could show her she remained a person, even unto her death.
And it was not so.)

And you were halfway right - it is no liberator that finally rides the use-trail, bearing open weapon. You hear hoofbeats along the road only heartbeats before a spear slashes through the drooping boughs and clatters into the midst of the camp, knocking over baskets and scattering ash from one of the firepits. Everyone leaps to their feet and bolts, some grabbing for weapons, some hauling along children or siblings to the shelter of the trees. You do not know if there is some second hideout to which they flee, but you too are instinctively standing, pushing through brush, before you realize how little point there is to it. The soldiers are not going to kill you. In fact, you are the only one here who need not fear that.
What a blessing.
You could go back, you think wildly, stumbling over mounds of moss. Give yourself up - they might have mercy on this tiny warband for their absence-of-cruelty -
But it is immediately swamped by an incongruous, hysterical amusement. There has never been mercy, either.
A movement among the undergrowth sucks your vision sideways. It becomes the bowman who drew you into this doom, who ducks behind the tangled roots of a fallen spruce as an arrow slashes above his head. A clump of soil twists under your foot - you fall to all fours, breathless and vulnerable, and he looks over and sees you; his eyes widen, and he goes to stand, and the loss of your ability to scream is an knife-blade agony to you now as you hear the soldiers shout, the bowstrings loose, they'll kill him and it will be your fault -
And then there is an arrow in the bowman's hand.
Not piercing it: grasped, between fingers and palm, like a sceptre.
And he lifts his left hand and begins to speak, again in that native tongue you do not know, but the meaning is clear enough. As the soldiers emerge from the brush he curses them, and they stumble and drop their weapons, try to cry out - but there is blood filling their throats, tendrils of shining scarlet weaving in and out of nostrils and eyes and ears, and you hear the vegetal tear of cartilage, and the syncopated thud of bodies falling.
You shut your eyes a moment too late, and suddenly, the loudest noise in the forest is your breathing.
The bowman has not moved; his right hand still holds the slender stem of an ash sapling, its bark smeared with glistening streaks of red ochre and green algae.
You are probably supposed to feel… something. Joy, or awe, or even terror might be appropriate - but your heart refuses to accept them all, lets you be swamped only in a sudden biting anger. Not now! you want to scream. How dare you - do you know how long I have sought you? Do you know how many people, throughout all of Daevon, have suffered and starved in your long absence? Do you know how many of them you have left to be stripped, not even of land and goods and family, but even of the two unaffordables, their deaths and their hope? (Like me threads selfishly through your mind. Ever-hurting, never-dying.)
How dare you be this - this small, this mortal, how dare you not have pressed evidence of yourself across creation? If you can slay with a will why have you not risen already, why do you hide here with your hides and your yarrow and pretend one ounce of kindness makes any difference in the face of all that? How dare you live like this, be this, as though you are daring me to give up on you - which I could tell you I already have, I think even before I fully realized it. For in all the lands I passed through seeking you, there was no less pain. The hand of the oppressor was no less heavy.
You were supposed to have made yourself known then. Not now, when it is already too late. For what good is the rain once the fields have already withered?
But, because you cannot voice any of this, when he releases the sapling and turns to you his face contains no shame, only concern. “Are you injured?” You shake your head. “Then stand up.” He makes to take your hands, help you to your feet, but you flinch back.
“Forgive me,” he says, and you know it only means for touching you thus without permission, only that you had to witness that violence without warning. It is not even an apology, not even an admission that there is any fault borne, when he should have rescued you and didn't.
But when was the last time you dared to think of forgiveness?
The oppressors had not let up. The slave-drivers had not stayed their rods, and the debt-collectors had still torn screaming children from their parents' arms. Such blinkered monstrosity was unforgivable, and your principles got you nowhere but dragged into the square and bled like a slaughtered goat, and so forgiveness is a power you forgot you could wield.
He is still waiting expectantly, but blurred, now, and you realize that there are tears on your face. It hurts, it hurts, you are dying with it, but now you understand why the vision was aflame; if you have learned anything coming this far into the north, braving for yourself the snow and the bitter cold, it is that frozen flesh thinks everything is fire devouring it. Even if the warmth is all that is keeping it alive.
Deliberately, you nod, and hold out your hands.

« | Such A World As This | Poisoned Honey | »


Thunder rolled across the lengths of the Khyber Pass. The man stood firm, atop his fortress of fellow, lifeless men. The thunder echoed - its layers of guns, of hoofbeats, of shouting and screaming, resounded in his ears. A single spark attempted to light the world ablaze. And the man did just that for a few precious seconds, his sword turning him into a whirling dervish of destruction. Then, the thunder outstretched its fiery hands, cracking once to mourn the man, who had opened up his insides to nourish the Earth with his blood.
And so it was.
So did so many similar stories play out in the battle. Brothers, sons, fathers, uncles, jeejayaan. Their life quickly hopped over to only surviving within the mind. The battlefield is a lonely place, the men would find.
The men, on both sides, claimed each others lives, before their victory was cut short by another. Before the small minnow could grasp its prey, it too was eaten by the bass.
All were devoured ravenously, however, by the tiger. The tiger stood atop another fortress - far surpassing the one which the man had stood upon, the one which had leaked crimson into the Earth. The tiger's name was whispered amongst the many, carried aloft by the wind — "Nalwa, Nalwa," — snaking its way into each and every enemy's thoughts as the Sikh battalion held its position. Body after body, thump after thump, slice after slice — the tiger was a machine, automating destruction far before such devices were even a dream's dream.
And so the dreamers of the day did not relegate their wishes to the night — instead, the thunder bowed, and the enemy was shot. And another. And so was another. And the tiger allowed his ambush to heal those taken down. Such was the way of the Sikh. Such was the way of the tiger, of the tiger-killer, of the man beyond.
Yet the tiger was soon to fall under his own namesake; the thunder, as mighty as it was, could not keep watch in all places at once. There was a shot's crack, this time unheard by the thunder, and the tiger was speared through with its unholy strike. There was no large conflagration or celebration; instead, the tiger limped, as its crimson began to spill as well. As the tiger's ambush helped him back to his lair, the enemy cheered, their own vigor renewed as they lapped the tiger's crimson like hounds. The drumbeats of the Nagara opposed this, as did the Sikhs, yet it was not enough. The tide began to turn, this time bearing down upon the Sikhs, as a tidal wave does on a merchant's vessel.
Waves of fury, the stamping of feet, the cry of men being slaughtered like wheat in the fields imbued a strange energy in the surroundings. Such energy rollicked through each and every participant and the tiger, master of each and every landscape he set foot upon, could feel this. and the tiger roared. Up from his medicinal bed, refusing to be healed, knowing his time had come — such was the tiger's reckless action. But the tiger requested one simple thing, which was to view its domain once more, before he would be under it. Ambushes helped their leaders, as was the law of nature. Trudging up the stairs, resting on two arms of his brothers, the tiger went at the slowest pace of his life — he was not used to limping. But as the weakened giant climbed, he was aware of his fate.
That is not to say he was afraid — who could be afraid of something that's a constant reminder on the battlefield? When the very action of taking up arms was to drive away, drown out, and defy that mere concept? No, no he was not afraid for himself. He was afraid for what he'd leave behind in the Misls.
The dying evening light was reflected in the tiger's eyes as they devoured the landscape for a few final moments. And for those moments, time seemed to slow to a crawl. The once valiant enemy saw a revenant, a specter from the dead, and ran. Turned tail and ran, as fast as their legs could carry them.

And the field was empty. Except for the cries of the thunder and of the victorious Sikhs.

The tiger was pleased by this outcome.
And so the tiger sighed, once.
And there was thunder.
And there was lightning.
And the tiger let go.

« SCP-5550 | IN SAFFRON SANDS | SCP-5903 »


sgt.bones 11/06/12 (Tue) 05:28:52 #11322857

A mock-up model of Eye-Man, created by a member of a private forum.

The original trilogy of Star Wars films has spawned one of the most dedicated and passionate fanbases of all time — and what sets this particular pack of nerds apart from the others is the borderline obsessive documenting and cataloguing of every extra or background character who appears onscreen. Every character — regardless of screentime or plot relevance — has earned themselves a name, a fictional backstory, and sometimes, if the design is visually intriguing enough — an action figure. But there's one character you won't find on a Wookieepedia page, priced exorbitantly high in a collectors guide, or lurking in the background, and if you do — God help you.
Eye-Man. It's a name unfamiliar to even the most knowledgeable of Star Wars fans, but mention it to the small collective who are aware of Eye-Man's non-existence — and watch as their faces light up with a unique mixture of passion, weariness, and fear. Each account is as personal as the next, but every one of them is laced with a bitter sense of self-doubt, delivered with the cadence of a wizened storyteller telling a story for the thousandth time.
Eye-Man is the name given to a background character who supposedly appeared in the original, theatrical cut of the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. His design is consistent: a large, muscle-bound cyclops covered in hair and a burlap sack. Compared to other extras in the Jabba's Palace sequence, Eye-Man is uncharacteristically simple. He's not a puppet or an elaborate animatronic, nor does he sport the colorful and imaginative design motifs of other palace denizens. By all means, Eye-Man is out of place, and rightfully so — because Eye-Man does not exist.
Every Eye-Man account starts out the same: a young boy between the ages of 5-9 watches Return of the Jedi in theaters after months of anticipation. They enjoy the film, but become particularly vested in the various aliens and creatures inhabiting Jabba's Palace — specifically the cyclops. The roles that Eye-Man supposedly fills in the film vary between accounts, but only add to the intrigue of this mythology. Some claim he only stood in the background alongside other extras, with brief focus-shots like the ones given to other extras. Others remember a scene where Eye-Man accosts protocol droid C-3PO, who is acting as Jabba the Hutt's translator. Eye-Man proceeds to brutally dismember C-3PO as Jabba and the palace denizens cheer on, some catching pieces of the droid's plating that fly through the air as the cyclops continues his assault. The alien takes time to chew on the droid's wires before unceremoniously ripping C-3PO's head off with his mouth and swallowing. This lasts for an extended period of time, with no musical score, and is never referenced again. The film proceeds as normal, with C-3PO apparently being reconstructed by the next scene, as if nothing happened.
In the weeks that follow, witnesses become fixated on the creature, with Eye-Man receiving the same fearful curiosity children often exhibit towards movie monsters — but that would soon change. Attempts to bring up "the scary cyclops in Jabba's Palace" to peers — even ones that were present at the same showing — result in confusion. Accounts detailing the C-3PO scene are laughed off the playground, and Eye-Man witnesses learn to not talk about their secret obsession.
Witnesses draw pictures of Eye-Man, incorporate the creature into their play sessions, and open every pack of Topps trading cards hoping to get a glimpse of their one-eyed muse in the same way that they had other background characters. As time goes on, Eye-Man creeps into their subconscious, usually in the back of their minds, and always in their dreams. No one ever forgets the dreams.
The progression of an Eye-Man dream varies between accounts, but certain attributes remain consistent. They take place in a dark and seemingly infinite location, like a forest or a basement. There's a nauseating sense of fear and dread. Other children are present. Simple actions like walking or running become near-impossible, limbs feeling like they're tied to cinder blocks. Eye-Man is always present, hiding behind trees, doors or in the background. The children explore the dream-world, with Eye-Man never far behind. When a child draws verbal attention to the stalking cyclops, the creature will lunge out and devour the child before returning to the shadows. This happens for what feels like hours. Upon awakening, it's like they never fell asleep. These dreams occur repeatedly for months, every single night. During the day, Eye-Man becomes an omnipresent background character in their life, hiding in the dark corners of a room, or under the bed. But they remind themselves that he isn't real, that Eye-Man is just a guy in a costume, or a puppet — and then they fall asleep.
For most Eye-Man accounts, that's where the story ends. After hundreds of vivid, life-like nightmares, Eye-Man suddenly disappears. They don't think about Eye-Man for decades, before stumbling on a forum post about identifying the "cyclops" from Star Wars. It all comes flooding back. One forum post built upon another — from website to website, witnesses began connecting with each other, and forming tightly-knit, private communities and chat-rooms to discuss this phenomenon. If you know where to look, you'll find them. If you post about Eye-Man, they'll find you. No consensus has ever been reached through these discussions, nor any evidence of Eye-Man's existence found. All that remains are the harrowing stories told by an aging user base on a private IRC server, and that's all there ever will be. When it comes to Eye-Man, closure is not an option.
But I was never satisfied with that. My story is different, and for the first time — I will tell it. Where I branch off from other witnesses, is that I saw something tangible.
My history with Eye-Man is, as far as I could tell, entirely unique to myself. I never saw Jedi in theaters. I saw it on LaserDisc in 1986, and I can assure you — there was no Eye-Man. Now, for context, Star Wars was well on its way out in 1986. People had moved on, kids especially, and the thought of any new content seemed like a pipe dream. This, however, was great news for me — because that meant all of the toys were on deep discount. Every Saturday, I'd go to the toy store and pick two figures from the giant bin of unsold Star Wars toys. This worked out conveniently well for both me and my notoriously cheap parents. Regardless, I was happy.
But one Saturday, as I sifted around the bin like usual, examining the cardbacks and trying to decide whether I needed another Stormtrooper, something caught my eye. It was a figure I had never seen before, and I was pretty certain I had seen them all. You've probably guessed it by now, it was Eye-Man, staring at me in his 3.75'' glory. Now, as any avid Star Wars collector will tell you, an action figure of a random, no-name background character is a pretty common occurrence, so seeing a character I wasn't particularly familiar with wasn't anything new. For every Luke Skywalker, there was a Squid-Head or a Walrus Man. But this figure was different. He unnerved me. From the photo on the cardback, he looked like he was from Jabba's Palace, and while I had a particular affinity for Hutt goons — I just couldn't bring myself to buy him. He was way too creepy, and quite frankly, I didn't need that in my toybox. I picked up another Stormtrooper, and headed out.
As soon as I got out of the store, I began thinking about Eye-Man. In fact, he scared me so much I debated never watching Return of the Jedi again, in fear that the one-eyed bastard would be staring at me from the corner of my screen. Nonetheless, my fears were alleviated when I went back the next Saturday, and Eye-Man was nowhere to be seen. I breathed a sigh of relief, and didn't think about my one-week-boogeyman for 20 years. That's right, no dreams, nothing. I simply forgot about him. Then, I saw a post on a sci-fi forum that made my jaw drop.
A user was asking about the cyclops from Jabba's Palace, and the entirety of the thread had it out for this guy. Pages and pages of arguing that there was no cyclops in Jabba's Palace, while OP insisted there was. It came flooding back to me — the store, the figure, the fear. I jumped in and vehemently defended OP, flashing my nerd cred by mentioning that the cyclops was named Eye-Man, and Kenner made him into a toy during the final years of the line. Another user blatantly told me I was wrong, and obviously confusing Prune Face for this non-existent Eye-Man character. I told him they were wrong, but when multiple users began telling me this figure didn't exist, I decided to do my own research.
I must've scoured every collecting fansite on the internet. I looked over the official Kenner checklist hundreds of times — no Eye-Man. I then assumed a figure from another toyline might have ended up in the Star Wars bin, and my faulty memory filled in the details, but no. There was no toy that resembled what I saw that day. A couple days later, I got a PM on the sci-fi forum, inviting me to a private chatroom. I told my story, and the rest is history.
That was six years ago. Since then, I've been fascinated with Eye-Man and the tightly knit community that has sprung up around him. There were only a couple hundred of us, but we had become pretty close. Eye-Man, being an exhausted topic, became less and less of a focus over time — sans the indoctrination of a new member to our little clan. We got to know each other, talking about our lives, our families, hobbies, whatever. We were friends, and as clichéd as it sounds — the Eye-Man community was like a second family. All of us were nerds, in one way or another, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that even Eye-Man himself was given an irony-tinged lining as time went on. The embodiment of childhood fear and uncertainty that hung over our heads like a one-eyed Damocles turned into little more than a calling card — his presence immortalized on #WheresEyeMan coffee mugs and t-shirts. I even received a custom Eye-Man action figure, who looked as terrifying I remembered him.
The next step for any community like this would logically be a meetup. That's right, the Eye-Man fandom decided that we would get together at one of the larger Star Wars conventions. I was ecstatic. It was only a two hour drive, and I would finally get the chance to meet the people I had been talking to for the better half of a decade. I got to the convention and immediately began searching for the hall that we rented out. A large sign, saying "Two eyes only, please" was stationed out front. I entered, expecting the same lighthearted atmosphere and banter from the chatroom to carry over, but I was dead wrong.
Nothing could prepare me for how quiet the room was. Around 40 people, simply staring at each other. Some were aimlessly pacing, and others engaged in hushed conversation from a corner. I found our organizer, and asked what was happening. What he told me felt like a punch to the gut from Eye-Man himself.
A few people recognized each other.
Forest.
Basement.
Convention hall.


Written for LordStonefish as part of an unofficial gift-swap.
Parody of "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe
Based on Big egg

 Once upon a Big egg dreary, while I masticated weary,
Over many a crisp and juicy omelette with a cheesy core—
 While I clammered, nearly clanging, suddenly there came a banging,
 Like a person I'd left hanging, hanging at the chamber door.
“'Just some personnel,” I sputtered, “hanging at the chamber door—
 On the wrong containment floor.”
 I remember pretty surely, I was up quite bright and early;
Having just assisted someone in MTF Eta-Four.
 So I'd snuck into the kitchen;—seeking something to enrichen
 My breakfast before my switch in—to room two seven one four—
For the reading and recording in room two seven one four—
 Which was on a different floor.
 And each oval in the carton did its very best to hearten
Me and my hand knitted tartan like I'd never been before;
 So that in this hour witching, I stood at the table, twitching
 “'Just some dumbass D-Class bitching cuz he's on an errant floor—
Or a researcher with munchies who is trying to implore;—
 That is what it is, for sure.”
 So I got a little braver; then deciding not to waver,
And I filled my mouth with flavor before heading to the door;
 "You there, what's your level clearance? Come on, keep with the adherence,
 Better make your disappearance from this here containment floor,
I can hear you, sneaky guy”— I said, as I unlatched the door;—
 Empty hall and nothing more.
 Down the hallway, both directions, I was making quick inspections,
Looking for those insurrections that had happened at the peg;
 But the door was held and sturdy, not a peg missing of thirty,
 So I sought the shifty birdie and called past the coffee keg
Making fun of lowly D-Class, “Come to me I humbly beg!”—
 But no person stretched a leg.
 So there I retired fuming, to the meal I'd be consuming,
Then there came a second booming at the kitchen's sturdy gate;
 “Fucker,” said I, “of a mother, why must there now be another;
 Let me see, then, what this other sound could possibly equate—
I'll be right with you, dear omelette, stay there still upon your plate;—
 "No one's there!” I cried, irate.
 So I flung the cabinets open, for some sign of life was hopin',
When I spotted in the corner of my eye something irreg;
 No, the light was not projecting this image right there erecting;
 I had happened on a specimen; a small pristine Big egg—
Quietly perched on a platter next to my right-sided leg—
 Near the coffee in its keg.
 Then the egg, it started moving to the music, swiftly grooving,
And I thought myself behooving as to keep the Big egg safe
Lest it fall and crack its shell or on some jagged surface chafe,
 “Ok sure, you're pretty funny but you,” I said, “might be runny,
 And your yolk is precious, honey, since your Bigness is so naif—
Tell me of your fowl maker, of your organ guarantor!”
 Quoth the Big egg “Nevermore.”
 I was visibly astounded, surely not the egg had sounded,
I was just being unbounded with my cuteness towards the dish;
 The Big egg was quintessential, bursting egg with Big potential
 Not the least bit differential, all an eating man could wish—
So I gathered up some spices and set them about the floor,
 Which the Big egg did deplore.
 So it started madly hopping, like a fish so fiercely flopping
With no earthly chance of stopping without triggering a war.
 But it still was early morning and I'd have to start adjourning—
 Or my boss would soon be scorning for the duties I ignore—
"When will that damn guy retire so I can be level four.”
 Quoth the Big egg “Nevermore.”
 Though my wit was rather glassy I could tell the egg was sassy,
“Okay,” said I, “this here lassy better learn some manners more
 With an egg as Big as this one, I'd be wrong to say it is one
 Likely now to make admission of the Bigness at its core—
Though its Egginess revealing, I find eggs to be appealing
 And its Bigness I adore'.”
 But the Big egg was so big and was becoming like a brigand
To me, snatch'd up my wig and tossed it gruffly on the floor;
 However, not to sound perverse, I see that it could have been worse
 My wig was simply borne of verse, it was poetic metaphor—
To show my utter consternation at the Big egg's short vocation
 Of the pithy “Nevermore.”
 I tried simply ascertaining that which needed more explaining
Was the Big egg's meaning feigning, was it seeking something more?
 All of this I sat discerning without once my noggin turning
 Till I thought a thought concerning, where the Big egg would explore;
Glances left and right confirming it was not here anymore;
 Giving me another chore.
 Over counters, under tables, past the baskets full of labels
Tangled up in oven cables, it was nowhere to be found
 “Egg,” I cried, “Oh egg of Big—under every plate I'll dig
 Until—Until I up your jig and toast you evenly till browned";
A crash, a crack, way in the back, and with a wack, I caught the round
 It didn't even make a sound.
 “Ovum!” said I, “membrane dweller!"—stood I, grabbing the de-sheller—
"I will take you to the cellar and store you among the wine!,
 You may be Big but I am long, you may be egg but I am strong—
 And so my life I will prolong by serving you in pickle brine—"
And then the worst thing I have ever witnessed started to arise
 The egg was Biggening in size.
 The egg had begun to increase its Bigness whole, not piece by piece
I knew that I would soon decease if I could not impede its motion—
 And yet, then and there it stopped, my jaw and testicles both dropped,
 The thing the egg was Bigging swapped, it now was Biggening its notion—
Making everything about it simply egg and only Big.
 Big egg Big egg Big egg Big
 Big egg Bigg'd, Big and eggly—egg and Big and egging Begly
Begged the egg “Egg Beg my Geg” he Bigly egged it on some more
 “I cannot take the egg!” I shouted, “nor incessant Big” I spouted
 Scampring all around I scouted for some thing to ease my sore
Till I found a cap of mnestics left forgotten on the floor.
 Quoth me in the moment “Score!”
 Popped a pill and then I waited, with a breath completely bated
And my headache was elated when there was no egg in store
 All its Bigness was inverted, nothing was remotely hurted
 Just me and a man, no-shirted, who was running out the door;
And I laid alone recalling, joyous to the point of balling
 The big egg was nevermore.


The stage was where she lived. Sure, she might exist outside, but on the stage, she came alive. When the candle light dimmed, when the audience grew quiet, she truly shone. It was just her, the orchestra, and the music. The sweet fire of the candelabra being extinguished, the curtain rising, the feeling of elation as she raises the conductors baton. Lyre's ninth tonight, a sad song. One less of passion of the heart, but one of the soul. Despite the elation, they could all feel something tonight. A feeling of malaise, one of danger and death. Not thrill, but the deep human attraction to suffering and fire, the same sort of masochism that attracted the performers to the stage. This special breed of terror bled through the soft, moist streets of London, as a black sludge pooled beneath the feet of a member of the audience. In the darkness of the theaters seats, a Masques nonchalant frown turns to a smile.
When the last violin had been packed away, the last singer sent home, she slumped to the ground in exhaustion. The spasms had gotten worse, the poison that saved her from the seizures was killing her. Laudanum, the supposed miracle cure, ran thick in her veins. She knew that it was useful; it kept her from dying. As she withdrew the black-tinted bottle from a pocket in her overcoat, the soft sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway, punctuated with the sound of a dripping fluid. She quickly stuffed the bottle back into her dress before shakily rising. A man stood there, dressed in a polite red suit jacket, his hands visible atop a cane. He would have been handsome if not for the white, ceramic mask adorning his face.
"Simply gorgeous, miss. I've been traveling these great continents for a great long time, and I have never heard that piece quite like that. And I've heard it from the man himself."
As he spoke, a drop of fluid ran down the mask, before dropping to the floor. Francesca shifted her wait to her side, apprehensive of this mans demeanor and the cockiness of how he spoke.
"Pardon me sir, but I really must be going. I have an appointment to keep." As she spoke, the man's head tilted sightly to the side as another drop leaked down the mask.
"Well, I mustn't keep you, in that case. I must let you know that I'm gainfully employed at a theater company, and we have been searching for an accompaniment." Drip. At this, Francesca glanced at her time-piece.
"If you wish to discuss such matters, I might expect you to make an appointment." Drip. At this, she slid a calling card from the pocket of her bag. The man's hand left the cane to nimbly slide the card from her grasp. Drip.
"I'll be in touch, Miss…?"
"Morsine."
"Well, good evening then, Miss Morsine."
With that, the masked man spun around, and left the room. Francesca sunk to the floor, and finally had a moment of silence to drink a few sips of the opium. Drip.

Francesca awoke with a start the next day as the almost uncomfortably warm sunlight soaked through her bedroom window. The sparsely furnished room bled with light yellows and oranges from the harsh rays, sapping the room's calm with a dryness, the same way an out of tune instrument can steal beauty from the night. The young conductor shakily strode to the nearby washroom, heart pounding irregularly. Her stomach burnt like acid, bile rising. She stumbled to grab the bottle of sickly sweet medicine off the counter, only for it to crash to the ground as her hand shuddered. Francesca shook in uncapping the green-glass bottle, before taking a sip from the poison.
It had come to her from a doctor, a Frenchman with the face of a crow. He had seen her in her youth, sickly and shuddering from the plague, from that terrible pestilence that swept the world. He offered her his healing skills, but cautioned it may not be an effective cure. It had worked well enough, but those days were coming to an end.
Francesca glanced at the card on the side table, considering her few options. Stay and die, or go forth into the world and find the doctor that had saved her this long. With that, she slid the card into her coat pocket, and set off into London's streets.
Drip.

« A Good Actor Never Dies | Orchestra Del Masque »


Rainbow Baby (also called Sunshine Baby): A baby born subsequent to the miscarriage or still-birth of the previous child. This phrase is referring to the happiness that can come with a new child after the “storm” and emotional stress caused by the death of an infant.

A little figure took dragging steps as she thumped along the decrepit sidewalk. A scarf bound her ears and nose, pushing back the bite of late October air. There is a time in autumn when the weather is perfect. It lasts about a week. A week in which, when one breathes in, their lungs are filled with cool air. The humidity of summer has gone. The leaves are at their brightest, and the ones that have already dropped crunch underfoot. That time of autumn had ended a few days before. Now, the leaves were wet with freezing rain. Unforgiving wind rattled the skeletons of the barren trees. It darted between the rows of two-story buildings and pulled at the woman's hair, throwing it into her face. Her coat barely kept the winter at bay.
Long past was the hour when the shops had closed. During the day, the windows had shown off their wares, but now they were reduced to darkened voids. Ahead lay the outlier, a bar called “Avev's Tap House”. The light of the sign displaying this cut into the darkness and buzzed with soft contentedness.
The woman pulled open the door and a gust of hot air brushed against her shivering body. Several people were in the bar, talking and yelling with drunken excitement as friends long separated caught up with each other. The TVs nestled in the corners of the bar displayed a football game, the presence of which added to the noise as the sports fans cheered over baskets of fries and bottles of alcohol. The woman grumbled.
There are two reasons people go to bars: the first, to socialize and party, the second, to drown out their troubles. Not a single person was here to do the second, much to the woman's dismay. She would've relished the quiet. She was here to deal with her own grief, and she didn't want other people around to witness it. She ordered a drink.
Down it went. The home team scored on the TV. The woman threw her hands over her ears and swallowed a sob. Another drink would help, and it did, a little. She hadn't been able to drink in a long time. She felt ready now, so she fumbled for a pen in her bag. She scribbled something down on a napkin, something important she had learned, and slid it to the bartender. He swooped it up and looked for a moment before he tore it up.
The bartender leaned over the bar. “Follow me at a distance,” he whispered. He pivoted and trotted to the other side of the bar, disappearing behind an ‘Employees Only' door. The woman counted to ten, then she followed.
Behind the door was a normal storage room, dark and musty. The woman pushed through another door and descended a flight of stairs. She rounded a corner.
The room before her was of a different world. Strings of old christmas lights lit the place with a dim colorful glow. Wind chimes hung from the ceiling, sitting idly, useless in the still and quiet air that this place produced. Buckets of herbs littered every corner. There were boxes stacked up to the top of the room. In the opened ones, she could see copper wires, steel pipes, and many other shapes of metal- like gears and wheels. In the center was a table. In the middle of that was a large glass bowl, surrounded by any number of tools- scalpels, scissors, pliers, and knives.
The bartender was talking to an old man sitting at the table, who crouched over a sheet of paper, which he was scribbling on with a dull pencil. His tiny eyes peered from heavy brows as he focused more on his writing than the bartender.
The most interesting thing about this room were the shelves of possibly hundreds of bottles. Several more of them hung near the wind chimes. Inside these bottles were substances of all kinds, many of which the woman couldn't identify. Many were content to lie still at the bottoms of the bottles. Some were, less content, so to say. They boiled and burned. Some melted together in little spheres or piles. Others sloshed and hissed with anger, crashing at the sides of their bottles, and biting at the cork that sealed the top. They came in every color and consistency; some sparkled, some were dark, some flowed, and some stuck. Some bottles appeared empty, but they were not.
“Did anyone see you come back?” said the bartender.
The woman broke her fascinated stare at the bottles. “No. They're focused on the game.”
“Heh, people would notice a lot more about the world if they weren't so focused on mediocrities,” snickered the old man.
“Avev, you're such a dinosaur,” laughed the bartender as he headed for the stairs, “This is your client, Lauren.”
“Ah? Did you get all that I asked for?”
“Everything,” said the woman.
“Ready to receive your purchase then?”
“Please don't call her that.”
“Fair enough. Give me what you've got.”
The woman slipped her bag off her shoulder and unzipped it. She pulled out two-hundred dollars in cash, a bag of lemon drops, seven shoe laces, a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of whipped cream, two quarters, a Canadian penny, and finally, with shaking hands, a little shoe box.
“Ah, yes. I have all the other ingredients myself, so do not worry,” said the old man. He picked up the shoe box. “Is this?”
“Yes. Please be careful with her.”
The old man opened the box. The woman averted her gaze. Inside was a very, very small cadaver. The man's expression changed. “This'll all turn out fine. You'll have to stay until after close if you go through with this.”
“I have to.”
The old man nodded and moved over to the shelves. He brushed a wrinkled, delicate hand over the bottles, his nail making a small clink sound on them as he moved past. He snatched one up. It contained a very light pink liquid that was about the consistency of glue.
“A base element. Yes, this will do.” He popped the cork and held the bottle close to his eyes. A thin mist came from the rim of the bottle. He poured it all into the glass bowl. It sizzled. “I'll have to get more next time I run errands.”
He hurried back to the shelves to fetch another bottle. This one was a spotty green. He measured it out. “Forty-two ounces of Kelsomere. Yes, yes. Hand me a lemon drop.”
The woman ripped open the bag and rushed over to hand it to him. He popped it in his mouth. The woman winced.
“Oh, they're not a part of the recipe. I just like to eat them,” said the old man. “Twenty-nine ounces of Gharin, ninety-five ounces of Fahro… no, better make that ninety-four-point-five.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes, yes, of course, of course. I have to ask you to step out for a bit. Can't have my recipe getting out. I'd assumed you would've been on your way on your own.”
“I don't even know what you're doing. I'm sure it's f-”
“No! Go upstairs,” hissed Avev. “I am an artist, and art is not meant to be seen half-done. You might see something you'll regret.”
The woman's chest tightened, but she pivoted and trotted up the stairs. As soon as she found herself back in the storage room, the air felt heavier. This was the normal world. That room downstairs was something different. She hadn't been inside that specific room before, but that was not the first time she'd rubbed elbows with that world. She realized how Avev's shop had blocked out the sounds of the people upstairs, and now they all bit at her ears again. She pushed through the storage room door, resisting the urge to shout at everyone to quiet down.
Her chair had been taken by a new customer. She forced herself to not be angry about it. I'm at my worst right now, but that'll change soon. She reclined against a wall as the heat of other bodies choked her. She considered ordering another drink, but decided against it as her head floated in a little circle. This place was a front, after all. Who knew what kind of things were in those drinks anyway. They were probably nothing out of the ordinary, but she knew that anything had the potential to be extraordinary. The woman sunk to her knees. She knew enough about the world to get a bit of an idea about how much she didn't know. That didn't matter. What mattered is that Avev would be able to help her. It didn't matter that there were things she wasn't allowed to see. If she gave the shadows what she owed, and the shadows spat out what she wanted, she didn't need answers.
The woman stood up and pushed through the crowd to the door. Nausea had come over her. Fresh air blew harshly against her face in reaction to the door disturbing it. Her heart kicked her ribs. Her stomach settled as frigid air cascaded down her throat. She seated herself on the concrete edge of a long-dead flowerbed. It was cold to the touch, so she did not idle long. The wind picked up a whirlwind of leaves and sent it down the street, seemingly the only living thing aside from the woman to be outside that night. It danced down the alleyway, unaware that as soon as the wind left it, it would fall apart and die. Maybe it was really alive. One couldn't always tell.
The cold tempted the woman to retreat inside. She didn't listen. She wasn't ready to return to the dizzying heat and noise. The woman exhaled, and saw her breath for the first time that season. She wished for snow. The serenity of snow made the cruelty of cold worth it. It might be another month before it comes. The woman paced. Waiting is hell. Peace would come soon. She reminded herself that she would be spending this winter with the person she cared most about. That person would come back soon. Winter's never bad with a loved one. So she waited.
“Hey, are you alright out here?” the voice leapt from the darkness. The woman opened her eyes. The bartender stood over her. “Don't let yourself freeze! We've only got the materials to bring back just one.”
He helped the woman up. Her eyes stayed low to the ground, her furrowed brow hiding the mascara that streaked her pale cheeks. When they went inside, a pleasant warm surrounded her, instead of the hot sweat that had clouded the place earlier. Most of the people had gone home.
“What time is it?” the woman drawled.
“Half past one. We're going to kick out the stragglers soon. Avev's almost done.”
A weak smile teased the corners of her mouth. “… almost done.” She felt tears coming back. The bartender showed her to a seat. She rested her head on the counter. The bartender brought her some ice water, but she didn't touch it. She was sick of the cold. The bar emptied.
Sleep had almost taken her when she heard the ‘Employees Only' door swing open. She leapt to her feet. There he was. Avev stood in the doorway, holding a bundle in his arms.
“Is that…” the woman's voice trembled. The rest of her sentence wouldn't come out.
Avev nodded. He handed the woman the bundle. She nearly dropped it as emotion overcame her, and she fell to her knees and cried.


« La Rue Macabre »

La Rue Macabre. Just the place you've been looking for all this time.
The voice whispered to him through the trees in the sound of insects and wet things slithering through tall grass. For a moment, he wasn't even certain he'd heard it right, so lost was it in the nighttime sounds of the swamp. But it was there, all around him.
It breathed at him with the moist heat of the swamp itself, the slow exhalation of someone who has all the time in the world.
Special Agent Robert Craig squinted into the darkness around him, his hand clasped tightly on the butt of his holstered weapon. He wasn't certain how he'd gotten here, alone in the swamp. His three-man team had been assigned to tail a threat entity through the twisting back alleys of the French Quarter, and somehow he'd gotten lost.
Something big, a limb maybe, fell through the lower canopy to splash into the tepid pool behind him. The noise stabbed into his already tight nerves and he spun towards it, pistol already in his hand.
Nothing. Just the spreading ripples on the pool that he could barely make out in the near darkness.
He cursed to himself as he re-holstered the sidearm. No reason to get jumpy, it's only the swamp. Lots of stuff make noises here. He sure wished he could have seen it though.

As he sloshed through the mud, it only seemed to get darker. "Get your shit together Bob, it's just a swamp. You've been in wetlands before, Remember Guatemala? Good times." He muttered to himself as he pushed through another dense clump of palmetto. "Just gotta head north east. Eventually I'll either hit the city or a road."
He glanced around again, trying to peer though the darkness that seemed to close in on him like a living thing. There's a road somewhere.
The heat was oppressive, even now, long after the sun had set. But it wasn't just the heat that made him feel so goddamn jumpy. This swamp wasn't like other swamps. Night ops in wetlands were always a special kind of hell, but he'd been prepared for those.
It wasn't that he was dressed for a city op either that made this trek different. Everything felt like it hated him. His Sense wasn't as strong as some of the others he'd trained with in his GOC SpecOps crew, but it was certainly strong enough to sense the raw malevolence that seemed to permeate even the air he was breathing.
The thought made his skin crawl. He'd heard about Greens that could turn air to acid in your lungs. Blacks that could manifest locusts in your chest cavity, Blues that could-
His ruminations cut off as something big slid into the water off to his right. He froze as he strained to see into the darkness around him. The faint light from the stars barely filtered down through the canopy. Just enough to give him the vaguest outline of the branches that seemed to just appear in his way.
He slowly reached down to his sidearm, a surprising amount of relief flooding him as his fingers found the cool steel and tactical rubber of the grip. He curled his fingers around it and ever so carefully lifted it free from its holster.
Firing it in the darkness would likely give away his position, and the muzzle flash would definitely destroy what little night vision he had. But that was preferable to ending up as dinner.
Immediate concerns, remember your training. He thought to himself as he slowly brought the sidearm into position. Nothing moved around him, just the dense noise of the swamp, the susurration of leaf on leaf, a riotous cacophony of insect swarms, and the low brap of the frogs.
Nothing big, anyway.
What's the matter, Craig? Isn't this where you wanted to be?
The voice whispered to him from the swamp all around him. At first he wasn't certain he'd even heard it, the words seemed to grow out of the ambient chirruping of some bug, the creaking branches of old cypress. But no, he'd heard it before, hadn't he?
Something brushed past him on the left, he could feel the change in air pressure as something big and low slid through the water, the ripples shifting against his calf and sending more ribbons of clammy water into his boot.
He whirled and fired, the concussive report of the .45 sounding like a cannon in the stillness of the swamp.
He tried to not look directly at the muzzle flash, focusing instead on that heartbeat glimpse of the swamp around him. He thought he caught a look at something mottled, the dull sheen of scales reflecting the flash from the gun, and he tried to analyze the snapshot burned into his vision as everything faded to black.
The riot of noise broke, the sudden cessation giving him a momentary sense of massive disorientation as both his vision and hearing seemed to cut out together. He took a step back, and the splash of his boot in the muck filled him with a nearly overwhelming sense of relief as the sound reached his ears.
"Fuck you." He muttered into the dark. "I don't know what the fuck you are, but you're not getting me that easily."
All that answered him was the slow resumption of ambient noise as the swarm took up their chorus once again.

The ground beneath him shifted as he put his weight down on his forward foot, and he crashed to the ground, his outstretched arm sinking into the muck up to his elbow. He grunted as something sharp slid across his forearm, the brilliant lance of pain blasting back the dullness that seemed to be seeping into his mind from the darkness.
He reached up with his left arm, fingers scrabbling for the low-hanging branches of a tree. He tried to pull, but the soft wood of the branch just bent with his force. He dug a furrow in the mud as he struggled for purchase, the ground itself resisting his effort.
With slow inevitability he pushed himself to his knees, foul smelling muck dripping from his hands. His arm burned as he flexed his fingers, and he tried to rub the mud from his left hand so he could inspect the wound.
Not like it matters if my hand is clean or not. He cursed himself for his clumsiness. The wound, while long, was probably just a surface cut, He wouldn't have worried about it anywhere else, but an open wound in a swamp could be a death sentence.
He grunted and pushed himself to his feet and he stared blankly at his arm, trying to penetrate the gloom to see the damage. He rubbed his fingers on his pant leg again, then tentatively ran his fingers along the ridge of torn skin.
The wound responded to his probe with a dull throb of pain, and he cursed again. The tear in his skin was shallow, just a scratch really, but it stretched from just above his wrist all the way up to his elbow. He thought he could smell the blood welling from it, and he shook his head again. "Fuck."
If he could smell the blood, then there was bound to be something else out here that could smell it too.

He was definitely being herded. He knew the signs, could tell when he was being pushed. Hell, he'd done it often enough. The last time he was in a swamp, in fact. His team had been assigned to clear out a nest of Greens in Punta de Manabique that the fucking Jailers had just decided to leave there.
"SCP-whatever has been contained to the peninsula of Puta de Manadick, where they will be kept under obser-fucking-vation." He muttered to himself in an ugly tone as he navigated around the edge of a tepid pool. He'd gotten better at not falling into the water since he fell. Maybe his eyes had gotten used to the dark, or maybe the moon had come up, he wasn't sure.
"They were fucking greens, and they needed to be put the fuck down. " He spat a wad of phlegm into the pool before walking back into the palmettos.
They were people. Just like me, just like you.
There it was again. The voice that spoke in the ripples of water lapping against the mud, the soft sucking noises from his boots as they pulled free of the muck, the incessant whir of insect wings. He hadn't decided yet if it was real or if it was just his imagination. His Sense told him the truth, nagged at him.
To acknowledge that Sense would be to acknowledge that he was different. That he was infected. For the briefest moment, his own inner voice wondered if maybe he was wrong, that he'd made a mistake. Maybe the GOC had lied to him.
"No, they weren't people. They were greens, and they deserved to be burnt out like a sickness." He grinned maliciously at the thought, enjoying the metaphor, using the image of huts burning amidst the trees to quiet his thoughts. "We're just the remedy, the fever flush that rinses clean the contagion that is the thaumaturge, the bender, the goddamn unclean."
Something hissed at him in the darkness, and he took a rapid step back, his pistol once more finding its way to his hand. His arm burned at his movement, and he had to grip the weapon tightly to prevent his hand from shaking. He held it before him as he tried to calm his heart rate.
The darkness around him was still, whatever threat that sat out there content to simply mock his perceived helplessness. But he knew it was there, and he could wait it out. Catch the fucker when it thought him weak.
This ain't Guatemala, Bobby boy.

He didn't know how long it'd been, slogging through the marsh. The oppressive heat of the swamp wasn't natural, as if none of the warmth from the sun had been lost since it had disappeared behind the trees.
He cursed again, as another hidden root caught his footing and he had to catch himself against the bole of a nearby tree. His hand had long since gone numb, and he'd had to cut off his watch to prevent the swelling from cutting off his circulation.
As he looked at the hand in the dim light from the moon that had finally risen, he wondered if maybe he should have just let it. His fingers looked like fat little sausages, and the skin around the wound was flushed with the dark stain of necrosis.
He coughed, and spat something dark into the water. The ache in his chest had been growing for some time, and he doubted it had anything to do with his exhaustion.
At least he'd made better time through the swamp once the moon had finally given him enough light to see. Even being unable to use his right hand hadn't slowed him nearly as much as whatever was following him had probably anticipated. He figured he had to be nearing the edge-
He paused his ruminating as realization slowly dawned.
"Ha ha, motherfucker! I'm gonna beat you at your fucking game!" He looked back out into the trees, and he thought he could just make out a clearing just a few steps away. The edge of the swamp? A road? It had to be.
With a groan, he pushed off from the tree and pressed on towards the clearing.

By the time he made it the hundred or so feet to the tree line, it had grown bright enough to see clearly. He stepped out into the opening and took a deep breath, relief shuddering though him as he glanced about.
It was then he noticed the tall, thin man leaning against the stump of a tree at the center of the clearing. In the dim light that seemed to radiate from everywhere, Craig could clearly see the reflection off the mirrored aviator sunglasses the man wore.
He tried to take a step closer, and a wave of dizziness overtook him, forcing him to his knees with a grunt of pain. The agony in his chest flared to life, pulsing in time to the same fire burning in his arm.
Tsk. Tsk. So close, yet so far.
Craig looked up to see the man straighten and shake his head, his long dirty beard swaying with his movements. He tried to push himself back to his feet, but his legs didn't seem to want to work anymore.
"F… fuck you. Now you show yourself?"
I try to be there for everyone who dies in my swamp. Even the assholes.
The man crouched next to Craig and laid a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder. The pain seemed to recoil from his touch, and clarity slowly overtook the dizziness.
Craig slumped to the ground in relief, taking deep gasping breaths as he looked up into the sky. "Well…" He panted, trying to frame his words. "I beat you. I ain't dyin' here. I survived your goddamn swamp. I just… gotta catch my breath. I can't be far from the city now."
The man laughed at that, a wet sound not unlike something heavy rolling into bog water.
The man pointed, and Craig struggled to focus in the direction that he was pointing at. It took him a few moments before he realized that he was looking at what had to be street lights, shining between the trees.
La Rue Macabre. Just the place you've been looking for all this time.
It was so close. So… impossibly close.

Cotton Eye Joe stood from the corpse that had once been Robert Allan Craig, Special Operations Agent in the Global Occult Coalition. He shook his head with a sigh before making a strange gesture above the gocker's body, and it slid noiselessly into the soft loam of the swamp.
The Fonteyn's were never a fan of this kind of justice. Nancy and Legba understood, they'd been powerless too often as their children were hunted through the swamps by the plantation owners and their dogs.
Not here. Not while Joe was around.
Eventually, maybe, the gockers would realize they weren't fucking welcome.
Not in La Rue Macabre.


Paul kept his arms folded as Mark nudged him into the living room. The stench of blood burned his nostrils, not an unfamiliar smell, but it wasn't one he enjoyed. He wasn't sure what he was walking into, but it certainly didn't expect a mini-exhibit in his living room.
Seven severed heads sat on top of pikes propped up against the couch. Paul didn't recognize any of them, but he wasn't convinced that it was a good thing. He never killed anyone he didn't personally know. The heads were still alive, with their noses twisted upward. Fuckin aristocrats.
Paul noticed that each of them was still dripping blood on the rug he just inherited and scowled.
"Unbelievable, this is just unacceptable."
Mark scratched the back of his head, "I don't think it's that bad."
"Not that- not that bad? They're bleeding all over my god damned rug!"
Mark put his hands in his pocket and strolled to the heads. They looked down at him from atop their pikes. The blonde one at the right end of the line winked. Paul shuddered. God damn aristocrats.
"It's just a little blood, man. At least they've been Va-"
"That was my grandmother's rug."
Mark scoffed, "Then you and her both have shitty taste. I mean honestly what the hell even is th-"
"Marky, you know I love you, but shut the fuck up."
"Right, sorry. I should probably tell you we might be behind on rent… Again."
"What the f-, why? My last two pieces sold for like 400 bucks a pop."
Mark slipped his hands in his pockets, "I might have spent a little, tiny, insignificant amount of that money on a recent transaction that I fully intend to make back tonight."
"Hold up," Paul took a sharp breath. He glanced at the heads. Somehow the decapitated nobodies passed their judgment on him. He felt all of his emotions bubbling in the cauldron that was his gut, "What did you do?"
"I maybe spent the rent money on Vapo-"
"Just- Jesus fuckin- how much of my god damn money did you spend on this?"
"A grand."
"A grand… a grand?! I could have killed seven people and put 'em on sticks for free."
Mark shrugged, "So could I, and I did. Vaporization gets expensive, ya know? Bribing police, silencing witnesses, yadda yadda. It's really not so bad, man. You're overreacting."
Paul slapped Mark upside the head. Three of the strangers laughed, the other four spit at him, "You've fucked us. Again. You know that? You wasted our rent vaporizing them."
"Relax, Paul. These heads, they're "interactive art". They'll make back our rent money and then some at the gallery. I mean just look," He lifted a pike out of the couch and brought it to Paul. The runes engraved around it had a faint glow, "You can't beat something like this."
Paul let out a long sigh and he rubbed his temples, "You a fuckin' dummy. The boys are never gonna buy this. They'd rather pay for my grandmother's toenail clippings than whatever the fuck this is."
Mark grinned, "You haven't even seen what they do. Here."
Mark passed the pike to Paul. A female head, some blonde, green-eyed woman in her thirties, stared at him. He sighed. They'd sold art at galleries before, it was always how they paid rent. Well, how Paul paid rent. There was just something… dark about Mark's artwork. Something too raw to be cool. He swallowed and looked at Mark, "What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?"
"Touch the head."
"Oy gevalt, the head? You're kiddin' me."
"Just touch the god damn head, Paul."
"A fucking grand," Paul muttered as he touched the head's cheek. A spasm rippled through his body, and he felt a burning sensation suffuse his body. Another spasm wracked him as his groin and chest began to twist in the wrong directions.
He dropped to his knees and then collapsed to his side. Paul's throat stretched and contorted, choking back his strangled gasp. He gripped at his hair as pain shocked through him, and his hair ripped free from his scalp in clumps.
Sticky, wet pieces of hair and skin sloughed off his head and stained the carpet. Paul felt a horrible burning pain in his groin like all his muscles were twisting and constricting at once, and then someone drove a knife through him.
He heard his hip bone crack in four different places, each agonizing pop echoing through his body with waves of blinding fire. The bones in his hands and feet crackled and popped until the skin and tissue shriveled and stretched taut over collapsing bone. He let out a plaintive wail and writhed, all sense of time lost within the cloud of his suffering.
Mark smiled as he heard Paul's voice raise in pitch from a low baritone to a soprano. Paul clutched his sides as he caught struggled to draw breath through lungs that no longer felt right. He spasmed again and violently threw up on his carpet, blood frothing from his mouth like a virulent poison.
He groaned. The voice of a female he didn't recognize vocalized his thoughts, "What the fuck, Mark?"
Mark picked up the pike and returned it to its place beside the others. Paul stared at his own head, and it stared back at him. He made a promise to himself to get a decent haircut when he was back in his body. Still, despite all the darkness that pumped through his new veins, Paul couldn't hold back a grin.
"You're sure they've been Vaporized?" It'd be a damn shame to let an illusion spell as thorough as this go to waste.
"They're as forgotten as the woman who took my virginity," Mark said with a grin.
"Jesus Mark, a grand?"
"I told you it wasn't that bad. The boys will love it."
"How long does this shit last?"
"Just touch your head when you want to change back," Mark explained, "It's an "interactive piece" after all. It wouldn't have any artistic worth if it were temporary."
"These better sell, man. Steam cleaning is fucking expensive."
"We only need to sell two, three heads tops. I got this. And we've got another job too."
Paul adjusted his belt. His waist was considerably thinner than before and shaped differently, "What is it?"
Mark leaned against the wall and waved his hand. All seven pikes vanished, and the illusion of a clean apartment replaced the mess that was just there. Even Paul's grandmother's carpet looked pristine as the day the old bat died. Mark held open the door for Paul.
"I'll tell you on the way. It's gonna be cool, just wait."
"Tell me, or you're doing it on your own."
"Paul, have I ever disappointed you before?"
"Every day since I met you."
"Well, this time's gonna be the one time I live up to your expectations!"
Paul took an unsteady step forward. The body he wore and his mind were at war with one another. His gait changed, and there was another five or ten pounds on his chest that wasn't there before. Paul inhaled. He straightened his back.
The worst part about this ordeal was that he had to look up at Mark now.
"Ladies first," Mark said with a smirk.
"Fuck you," Paul said as he adjusted his pants again, "What's the damn job, Mark?"
"We just gotta take some things from some guys who shouldn't have had them and give them to some other guys who should also probably not have them. You already know the place, it's one of your favorites."
Paul let out a long sigh, "It's them again, isn't it."
Mark nodded, a perky, porcelain smile was growing on his face. He held out his arm, but Paul brushed past him.
"You like living here, don't you?"
Paul shook his head, "When this is done, I want a new roommate."
Mark threw his arm around Paul's shoulder, "Ah, you love me. And you're driving."
"I fuckin' hate auctions."

« Totally Not Porn | Totally Not Guns Akimbo »


Greg had been given a choice. At the time, he thought the right choice was obvious. Now though, he feared he chose wrong. He'd seen a lot over the last three weeks. He bore witness to horrors so abstract and archaic they threatened to curdle his mind and entities so malevolent and powerful they were a hair's breadth away from wiping out all life on the planet. But he had yet to feel such a gnawing dread in the pit of his stomach.
Greg sat in a large room with a small circle of chairs gathered in the middle. Balls of yarn were piled at the center of the circle of chairs; their colors spanning the rainbow. Greg even saw a few with flecks of glitter woven into the wool.
There were five other people in the room. Four of them wore an orange jumpsuit similar to Greg's own. The fifth, though, was different. He wore a simple black suit that seemed to barely contain the bulk of muscle and sinew that lay beneath. His wide brick of a head was clean shaven and so meticulously polished that Greg suspected he could use it to signal aircraft. When he spoke, his deep baritone seemed to reverberate all the way through Greg's guts. The man introduced himself as Agent Cinders. He seemed nice enough. He was polite, patient while teaching and always followed up criticism or suggestions with a compliment. That didn't change the fact that he was the most imposing human being Greg had ever met. Even when Agent Cinders was giving you a compliment, a deep frown creased his face and it felt as though he was always just a few seconds away from ripping someone apart with his bare hands. Greg's time in prison didn't even come close to preparing him for something like this.
Greg recalled the conversation that landed him here. It took place the day prior in the bleak dormitory that he shared with a couple dozen other ‘volunteers'. The man called Researcher Hemsworth walked into the room an hour before lights out as he did every night to count and make notes on Greg and the others.
“D-54687, D-54677, D-54671, D-54668 and D-54665, please come over and have a word.” Researcher Hemsworth said in a British accent. D-54671, that's what Greg had been called for the past three weeks. He crossed the room and stood in front of the researcher. Once the 4 others Researcher Hemsworth named had gathered around, he continued. “You five have a rare opportunity for D-class personnel. You will be given a choice of what you will participate in tomorrow. Your first option is to be flown to a nearby forest with some particularly nasty bugs in it. I won't give you the exact details, but let's just say that if you don't have a phobia of insects now, you probably will by the end of this particular test. Your second option is to spend the remainder of your time as D-class knitting.”
“Knitting?” Asked D-54687, an older man with a scraggly white beard.
“Yes, knitting.” Researcher Hemsworth answered. “Normal knitting sitting in a non-anomalous room, using non-anomalous needles, making non-anomalous clothing out of non-anomalous yarn.”
“What if we don't know how to knit?” Asked D-54665, a younger man with a perpetually pinched facial expression.
“That will not be an issue,” Researcher Hemsworth assured him. “A member of staff will teach you the basics of knitting and help with any problems you may encounter. The projects you will be given will be suitable for beginners such as scarves and hats.”
“What's the catch?” Asked D-54665.
“I assure you there is no ‘catch'.” Researcher Hemsworth stated. He began to tap his pen on the clipboard, a sure sign he was growing impatient.
“I'll take the knitting.” Greg said and the four others around him chorused their agreement.
Greg didn't know if Researcher Hemsworth was lying about there not being a catch or if he didn't know who would be teaching them how to knit. Greg watched Agent Cinders as he worked. The way the tips of his knitting needles danced and twirled gracefully seemed uncanny once you saw the catcher's-mitt sized hands that held them. The blue, woolen scarf he was working on seemed to grow as if it were coming out of a printer. Agent Cinders glanced up from his work and saw Greg watching him.
“Is there a problem, D-54671?” Agent Cinders spoke at a normal volume, but his voice still seemed to cause the walls of the room to vibrate.
“Uh, no, no problem.” Greg stammered and looked back down at his own scarf. He tried to focus on the steps Agent Cinders had taught him, but knitting was surprisingly hard. Greg heard the chair Agent Cinders was sitting on creak as he stood up. The big man's footsteps were unnervingly silent as he circled around the outside of the chairs and stood behind Greg. Greg could feel the man behind him. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking. Agent Cinder leaned down to take a closer look at Greg's knitting.
“Good work,” Agent Cinders said, clapping him on the shoulder. Just the weight of the man's hand alone was enough to send vibrations down Greg's spine. “Watch the tension of the yarn though. You don't want it to get all bunched up on one side.” Agent Cinders walked back around the circle of chairs and sat down once again, the chair creaking under his weight.
Greg kept his eyes fixed on his work. There were six more days of this. Six more days of attempting to knit while a bald behemoth looked over his shoulder. Six more days of sitting in the same room with a man more intimidating than any prisoner he had met during his time at the maximum security prison. He began to think the bugs wouldn't have been that bad.


+ Content Warnings:

- Content Warnings:

Extensive descriptions of gore
Graphic imagery
Body horror
Bodily injuries

It's easier to bleed your skull through a circuit board than people would like to imagine.
The human body, when viewed from the wrong direction, is nothing more that a patchwork stitching of viscera concepts associated into bloodied archetypes — body, mind, soul, guts. Guts are not one with the body; contrary to popular belief, they're a teratoma placed on us by avenging angels who find the way we ooze through our membranes to be the most hilarious shit in the known cosmos. We process food, gel the guck in our sub-compartments, push it out through disposal chutes in the automatic behaviors we're taught since birth. Unlike those who revolt against their forms, those transhumanists, I'm well used to these behaviors, so switching my systems to a different model is no bother for me.
Reaching over my organic patchwork, I find the one thread holding body to guts. I reach a finger through an open loop — I'm glad nobody else is watching this — and yank upwards. Guts falls off. Splats. Messy, greener than I would've expected. I reach for a standard issue nailgun and stab it to a nearby coolant pipe. The rush of liquid hydrogen should chill the flesh to the degree where I need not care about it again.
Next excretion set for a millennia, intestinal activity turned infinitesimal. The sensation is like being boiled alive in permafrost.
(I'll still have to eat to keep my organs from failing — I can staple my mouth directly below the worker's cafeteria runoff sluice, when I'm on break.)
Once the remainder of my stomach acid dribbles from my torso, I reach back for the thread, where it now dangles in-sync to the loosened sways of my body. If I want full compensation for this job, I'll need to perform this next step perfectly. I let my feet stagger themselves over to the chrome chassis of an orbital repair drone.
I suddenly become acutely aware of the way gravity presses into you in this station. The standard 1 g I feel less like weight and more like rows of needles piercing equidistant over my skin, puncturing deeper the longer I stand here. That or my body is just more fucked from orbital radiation poisoning than I would've expected. Doesn't matter at this stage.
I rip the thread out and deconstruct over the drone. The metal has a new paint job in tendons and dermis.
Reaching tangled extensors through a hatch at the forward port, slithering into the spaces where the camera cables link up to the central processor. Slowly, I heave my grey matter in. Plop, plop, plop. Scraping the last chunks of cranium from my throat, I bleed my skull through the circuit board.
« Can you still hear me? »
The intercom buzzes.
I twist one of my cameras filling up with corneas to stare at it: a speaker wedged between parallel drainage siphons; one of the few available wall spaces in Mechanical Pit 008. It's installed at a crooked angle, pointed in the right direction to send any voices it emits rebounding from the amassed pipework.
« Is it going good? »
The speech is concave, the pitch hollow. The change is so slight that it drifts through the uncanny valley of audio.
« Is it? »
"Yes."
Something that's left of my original musculature recoils. I accidentally extricated my vocal cords along with the guts (how were those threads tied to the same knot?). They're jerking, throbbing on the duodenum's curves. My tongue is further removed, looped around the cecum; it struggles to slop out a noise in its new, mouthless habitat as the saliva freezes, anchors to hard metal touched by coolant's grace.
« We're glad to hear it. »
The speaker quality is too corroded for Management to hear the splurts.
"A question, though?"
« Yes? »
"Is there supposed to be so little space towards the rear thruster ports? I can hardly fit my hands in there." I squeeze, the pressure of a constricting oxidizer valve threatening to pop my nails into shards.
« You're trying to retain your hands? »
"As a keepsake."
« Keepsakes are a waste of information retention. Your brain cannot be expanded, no matter how much you peel its meat apart; to hold a reminder for the past is to relegate a chunk of your limited cognizance to an outdated existence, an existence no longer mandated of you nor your function. »
A bundle of fingers pushes into the snug cavity of a fuel cell.
"What philosophy book did you read that one in?"
« It's just reasonable work ethic. »
Crack. A metacarpal, left index finger, snaps. The fuel injector it tried to sneak around splintered it apart, a ligament having wedged on the carburized steel until it gave way.
"I'm… Retaining the hands' 'functions.' If I want to feel what I touch normally."
Crack crack. Both ring fingers lose integrity when an oxidizer filter turns out to be too tight a gap for them to surpass.
« And that would manage what? »
Crack crack crack. Two-thirds of a left hand break apart as shrapnel through a fuel pump. The thing is holding itself together by its last muscle, but if I reach just a bit farther in…
"Reminding myself of who I am."
CRACK. My left hand tears apart. My nerves scream.
« I— We don't see where the point in that would be. All the repair drone needs is your nervous and circulatory systems for the somatic rite to bind you in. If you don't buy the mental argument, then consider how much dead weight you add to your mass with even a single hand — a single bone. »
I dry heave on cold aluminum and choke on the deep press of electrical equipment. Quickly, I twist a rib through my facial layers and flick both tear ducts out through the still-open forward port. They splash in their own fluids on the floor and I shut the port.
"…I?"
« … »
"Should've recognized your speech patterns at first, Asma."
The dehumanizing quality of the speaker isn't enough to hide the quavering in Asma's voice as she resumes speaking. « Sorry. I would— would give a genuine introduction, though Manager Conduct prioritizes the appearance of a, concrete whole, for everyone to be directed by, not a splintered mess. »
"We worked fine before they put Conduct into effect. You can just speak to me. I don't care."
« Higher-ups do. »
"So?"
« I'm in a tighter fit than you are. »
I try to jostle the chassis to shake out the hand remnants, but it's no good; that flesh is stuck. Dead meat littering my framework until the engines boil it away. "What did you deconstruct into again?"
« Systems terminal, connected to the monitoring feeds and maintenance oversight. 2.461 meters squared. I had to eject half of my rib cage before I could fit in. The cooling fan sits in a gap carved through my abdomen. »
"Ah."
« Be glad your chassis is roomier. Are you at a stage where you can start the overwrite? »
"Couldn't they have afforded something larger for you, though?"
« If they spent more they would arrive at the same cost required to keep multiple oversight workers living on-station. Or, worse, a cost that puts the station in debt. And the rest of us managers can't negotiate with the higher-ups yet to receive an AI assistant. Too little business. »
I stretch a lumbar vertebra, tapping it idly against my lungs. "You can stop blabbering about finances now."
« Are you ready to start the overwrite? »
As much as my structure is inside the drone, the drone is not my structure — we are discrete, we are not the same. It isn't some bullshit distinction between the birthed blessing of skin and accursed sin of machine, though, so much as it is the conflict between our selves being founded upon two different forms of wiring — nerve versus cable. Neuron versus copper.
Naturally, the solution is to force one of them out.
"Yes."
« Then go. »
My nerves lunge for the attack. They punch into the silicon pathways and overtake the external laminate, prying through the layers of conductive substrata to rip the connectors out at their barest level. Metal screams in rapid pops of shearing microviolence. The axons lick loose of their cellular shields and jackhammer the cable insulators who cling to their cherished wires for dear life. The rubber is pierced, the cells invade; the vivisection extends to smaller and smaller levels of being. At every point replaced by my flesh the debris is ejected up and through my engines, piling onto the floor like ash after the blaze. My nervous system wages a burning trail through the totality of the drone's manufactured purpose.
Under the ash my tear ducts leak; effluence after effluence after effluence. The broken shards grind through the pores and gush mucus out red.
« Progress? »
The drone internals are nothing more than a necropolis now. Straining myself in, I let my nervous system thrash through the newfound unoccupied space. I close the vacuum left by the hollowed-out technology with myself.
Once the deed is done, I test. Thinking as though I were bending my arms, I signal to the drone's arms; they bend. Thinking as though I were flexing my fingers, I signal to the drone's claws; they flex. Thinking as though I were metal, I subsume the chassis.
The drone's body is my own.
Somehow, despite the presence of my mass, it feels empty.
"I finished the overwrite."
« Good. I— We, can get on with the rest, then. »
"…"
« Is there a problem? »
"…No."
« We're glad to hear it. We'll now be commencing your relocation to your work zone. »
I run my appendages along myself. This body is prolate, an egg bolted together and strapped along the cracks with gear designed down to the micrometer. It is perfected for 0 g movement; the platonic ideal of a microgravity robot. For 1 g movement, however, it's a waste of cash.
"I can't move myself to the work zone."
« Be patient. »
"Arms don't have enough strength to crawl with."
« I never said you would be doing the relocation. »
"This is not built for… Wait—"
I hear the gate to Mechanical Pit 008 whir open behind me.
« I… Hope it goes good, out there. We hope it goes that way. »
Before I can rotate a camera around a rapid blow impacts every inch of my body and sends me hard into unconsciousness. I can barely register an impact, let alone that everything's gone black, because, as my neurons try to parse the event, I wake up.
Surrounding me is vacuum.
The red blot of Jupiter hangs in the sky, pulsating a sickly hue while the stray moons flit along their rote orbits. The darkness is like a sink for the planet's intensity, offloading the scarlet it spews out until the color fades into the black, vanishing like it were never bled at all. Maybe if the Foundation hadn't fucked up once upon a time the region would look a lot nicer, though the need to seriously consider that is a half-century past relevancy.
Adjacent to the view is the station. The facility is as impressive as an orbital supply and rest depot can look, a hodge-podge of fuel tanks, generator blocks, docking ports, thruster nozzles, and heat vents, extending up and out from the central axis of the centripetal force ring — the habitation center where the structure's constant rotation is enough to mimic Earth levels of gravity. From a certain angle, it seems akin to a potted plant; one left unwatered to the point of withering. The glint of titanium masks the wilt of malnourishment.
Up ahead, a distance of a 20 meters, is a monolith: a black rectangular prism whose cold geometry is interrupted solely by etched grooves, coming together to form general murals depicting higher-dimensional hyperviolence. Etched grooves, and a square hatch at the side nearest to me.
At the side opposite to my line of sight, cables emerge from the monolith to wind across the station geometries into the distant generator blocks.
In my peripheral vision a glowing block of text flickers up. It scales in size until its text is clearly legible.

If you're reading this, you've got the job.
We apologize for the measure we took for relocation — deconstructing yourself physically and mystically opens up many points of exposure where it's easy to reach through and touch. However, you'll find that the time relocation took was drastically shortened as a result, so your work has been streamlined to an extent you're sure to find comfortable.
Ahead of you is the Demonic Resonance Core. Locked inside the monolith of orbital-grade ritual obsidian is a network of tartarean knights, summoned with the express intent to combat each other until all but one fall. As per the rite contracts signed for them, this is not possible; the specific knights summoned — 616th Saturnian Legionnaire recruits — are set to demanifest only on completion of their goal. They are contractually immortal. For as long as the Core stands this rite will proceed; uninterrupted, and indefinitely.
As always happens in prolonged demonic conflicts, massive amounts of radiation are released. This is sent through cables to the generator blocks for conversion into usable electricity. It's our main power supply. It poses a problem though, in that the sheer, spiritual instability means any electronics brought within the structure fry in an attosecond. Sending drones in is a waste of resources. Instead an organic mainframe is needed to carry out operations in there, something with an inherent buffer to the occult.
No, it wasn't always this hazardous, but the longer we've used it the more the fighting's intensified. No, we don't plan on replacing the core — it's far too expensive, I'm sure you'll understand.
The daily routine you've been assigned to is simple:
Every 24 hours you are to approach the Core and enter through the maintenance hatch. Avoid the swords, don't get too much blood on you, and inspect the energy intake pumps for signs of damage. If there are, repair. If there aren't, leave. And, before you ask, yes, it's a lot easier to dodge the carnage than you'd expect.
Once that is settled, you head to your assigned docking bay — Bay 020 — where you can hibernate for the remainder of the day. Nutrients are set to be automatically injected through your chassis. If an organ falters, on-station surgeons are at the ready. In the event of hemorrhaging…

This is tedious.
I scroll to the bottom; down seven pages.

…and the retinal eversion that would otherwise emerge.
By now you're bound to be antsy to get on with this, so, for some last words:
We're proud.
You've put in more effort for the station than any worker we've seen across any of our other stations. So much has been done to keep the mechanics in check and all of it has paid off in the comfort and soundness felt by every hauler crew who docks. It puts some of our top brass to shame, even! You deserve all the support we give you, and you can be certain we'll keep at it no matter what.
Our stations are safe in your hands. We care for you.

Sincerely,
Upper Executive.

REMINDER: THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO AN AGREEMENT OF NON-DISCLOSURE. ANY ATTEMPTS TO DISSEMINATE THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN WHICH ARE NOT AUTHORIZED UNDER EXPRESS UPPER EXECUTIVE APPROVAL ARE TO BE MET WITH—

I close the letter.
This doesn't matter.
I signed up for this for my own accord. I agreed going in that I would not speak of this job. I signed the somatic transplant forms knowing where my organs would be stuffed. I don't need to be coddled like some war veteran for my line of work, and I certainly don't need to be eulogized for being what amounts to a glorified custodian.
The Core means nothing for no one; it's another fault to patch, another tear to stitch. At the very least Upper Executive had the decency to not hype me up on hazard maintenance before they sent the letter. Whether they did or didn't wouldn't have changed a thing. It wouldn't.
I burst my thrusters forward, catching glimpses of my left hand's detritus sputtering out as ashen clouds. Quickly I reach the hatch. I thrust back, hook a claw on a safety latch, move the three others onto the triply-redundant set of security locks. All I can sense are reverberations from inside the Core sifting through the material of my chassis, jitterring the internals slightly. Some carry the same weight as roars; others, whimpering. None of them were sensations I ever felt in the station. Without an outside view you would never presume the core was there. It would be a non-issue, a non-thing, permanently detached from everything you'd need to be concerned with. The isolation is engineered into a solitude whose border I move at the very edge of.
Carefully, I twist the locks concurrently. There is a clunk as the hatch disengages. Despite the lack of air I can hear a sound rush out, like people sobbing. My body feels emptier than it did before.
I hope the pay raise is worth it.