Ten thousand cut and impossible faces stared at me. I lay naked and could not move. My own naked, not that woman's body that was sewn to me. Ten thousand bits of eyes and refracted faces stared into and through me, and some hundred hands reached into me and pulled threads of me away. My flesh unraveled and then my heart and guts, thin threads of gore and blood and slime, until I was an empty cage of bones.
And my demon master was above me, an awful amalgamation of beasts, a beaked head of a lion, dog and lizard hideously sewn together, bits of blood and gore leaking from the stitches. The ten thousand faces split into twenty thousand frightened, refracted masks, and my master loomed huge above me, more blackness than form, a horrible incomprehensible monstrosity that boggled my mind.
“BROKEN LITTLE FUCK. BROKEN, YOU DID NOT OBEY! BROKEN FUCKING USELESS BROKEN JAGGED BONES AND RENT FLESH!”
It's terrible thought inside my head, crushing out my mind. I had no mouth which with to scream, naked bones chipped against each other as I trembled. A thousand tiny clawed things desperately scraped bone, pulling my bones apart, pulling me to death.
“I FORBID YOUR DEATH, BROKEN SHIT,” his beak clacked noisily and a forked snake's tongue flicked about nearly faster than I could see.
The demon held the baby that I had not killed in taloned human hands. Crushed its skull in his chattering beak and drained its brains into me, and cut it's stomach with his crab-like claws and spilled its and guts into me.
“WITH THIS INNOCENCE I WILL PUNISH YOU!”
My mind shuddered under the terrible weight. From the great cock of a horse he pissed into me his hate and then was gone. And hands without arms or bodies threaded the spindles of hair and blood and guts, and made me whole again. When my mouth and lungs were made again, I screamed
“Master, I will obey!” I cried, “Master obedience is all! It is my food, it is my life!” But he was gone, I screamed at a black and empty space.
I woke in great pain. I could not move. I could not see. There was a muffled sound of insects. I realized slowly that I was not bound. My muscles simply would not move. There was pain but also a great exhaustion, a lethargy that pulled all function from my muscles.
I hovered near to myself, but I was not quite myself. There was a faint light. A simple room. A pallet of straw under me. I sensed it barely, as through a thick and colored glass. All around that glass was heavy black. And my master held me still, lay on me his rough diseased flesh clawed at me, and rotted out my womb so that I carried in me the rats and roaches, the pestilence that, birthed, would be the ruin of the world.
The world, that tiny room, was there but terribly distant, an impossible distance. I meant to flex my limbs, to scrape myself through that black tunnel, but my nerves returned only pain and I did not move. No will in my battered flesh to move.
“My name is Argyl.” The sound echoed and distorted around me. From where? From where? Was there a man behind that glass? I could not see. I ached and hurt. “Your eyes are open, can you hear me?” Simple language, there was a man there. Far far away from me. I meant to stir but there was only pain and the rape of demons.
Then mostly it was darkness. Shaking started in my muscles, a steady and uncontrolled twitching, almost a seizure except my dull mind remained to suffer it. Twisting and shaking in blackness, pain that shrunk my mind into a scrap of myself that clenched tight against it. My mind a narrow compressed slip of self that could not think, could only feel pain. A hurricane of glass cutting through my muscles and my mind.
I vomited sharp acid that cut my throat and mouth. I gagged and gagged and panic rushed up in me, the beast's panic for I had no wish to live myself, the panic of the body, of the beast, it seized my muscles in a great painful clench and I knew I must suffocate as vomit wheezed into my lungs. Too clenched to breathe, the distant world went away altogether and I was alone in pain and panic. Panic that drove my consciousness from my brain and down my neck. Hateful spiteful pain, ferocious pain, raging all the harder as its prey escaped into unconsciousness and shrank and shank away.
I was back in my body when I was aware of anything again. My muscles still shuddered uselessly, my eyes blinked a quarter open at best. But I breathed. There was no thought yet. A still ache engulfed me, squeezed any thought away from me.
An unknowable time later I peed myself. It surprised me, I had not known I had to pee. Cleaning myself seemed a good idea so I meant to rise, but nothing happened. So I thought to lay still and pant. My first act of self will, to clean my piss from me, and I could not. Why had I wanted to act?
The man was there then and he pulled back a sheet that was over me and looked away. He took the sheet up and then cleaned me. He'd gotten a wet rag from somewhere. His hands were firm, not groping, and gentle. My mind stammered forwards. Gentle hands, not lecherous. He stopped when my behind was clean. Left again and was back again. How much time had passed? I did not know.
He rolled me over and I saw only a wall then, a dark stained wood. The wet blanket under me was pulled away and he cleaned me more. How did he clean my front when I stared at a wall? I tried to form a thought but could not. Warm wet rags cleaned my crotch and belly, cleaned my thighs. My chest was wrapped in bandages.
The same man, the man who has stopped me slaying the child. I was empty, free of thoughts and feeling. Even the pain was distant, my shaking calmed. He was firm and efficient. He lifted me and I was clean on fresh straw. He draped a blanket over my legs and I was not naked anymore. A warm broth touched my lips and I drank it. He tipped the cup gently into my mouth.
“You're through the worst of it now,” he said gently. I wondered at his antecedents. The worst of what? Was this blunt pain better or worse than any other pain? This body, a body to which I felt no particular ownership, its pain was my master's broken tool. The worst of it. The worst of all lives, to be a slave such as I. To own nothing of myself, to drift and surge at the trivial will of a master, himself a victim of his nature?
My mind worked again, a little.
“You should sleep more,” he said, raising a cup of warm tea to my lips. I drank a little and it warmed me. A slight bit of pleasure. A warm sip of tea, a glass of wine, a good deep laugh, an orgasm, were these what I should live for? Should I simply balance the likelihood of future pleasure and future pain and, should the balance fall towards pain, affect my suicide?
I, the willless one. Did my master command evil through force of will, or was it simply his nature, to relish in the filth and the murderous? All insignificant. A great collision of insignificance and absurdity. A colony of microbes that thinks 'This, this is self. I am self but the microbes in my gut, they are other.' Broken broken broken.
“How do you feel?” The light was different, how long had it been? How did I feel?
“Broken broken” I whispered, though my voice was very distant strained. It was if someone else had spoken.
“Yes, you breast is gone,” he said, misunderstanding. “But you will live.” He spoke softly as if to soften a heavy blow.
“Not mine,” I heard my strange voice say, “But she is dead and he put her tits on me and put her heart in me and the sand scrapes my veins and I bleed it out and out and it turns my hate to sludge and builds in me a wretched loathing of all my evil, all his evil, I don't know the difference, his hate my hate, I am a tool, a broken broken tool. Broken broken.”
He hushed me or I would have kept repeating. My mind sputtered down and I realized I had struggled up as if to stand, but only sagged into his arms.
“Shh” he hushed again, and lowered me to the bed of straw. This time I was facing the room. He placed a kettle on a hook over the fire, and mixed the contents of a couple jars into a cup.
The room was small. The dark wood of the walls sucked up light. A single pallet of straw on which I slept, a simple wood table with a few jars and books, a stool, a small chest of drawers in some disrepair. There was no window. A door stood ajar and I could see another room, but the details were obscured in darkness.
The kettle boiled quickly and he poured water into the mug.
“This will help you sleep,” he said. I said nothing.
“Were you eating black tar?” he asked. Was I eating it? Yes. Or I was fed it. I could taste it almost and I felt desire grow in me, but I said nothing.
“Well, if it was you should feel fairly normal soon. The withdrawal usually lasts a couple of weeks. I couldn't get you awake the first week, and you're about halfway through the second.”
He brought the cup to me and held it to my lips. It was almost too hot, tasted of licorice, and was very bitter.
“This will help you sleep and calm your tremors.” He spoke nervously, but like he was trying to be calm and reassuring. He was not very tall, and wore a simple black robe. His arms were very thin. His long hair was tied back and he wore an unruly beard that made him look a bit wild.
I still said nothing. I thought nothing. I was nothing. He sat watching me for a time. I realized I was clothed. Bandages covered my chest and a blanket was pulled up to my hips. Odd for a man to clothe me. I realized I was thinking again and then that I was very tired. I drifted down to sleep.
I dreampt of flowers. I lay in a field and they sprouted from my skin and unfurled before a warm black sun that leached the color from the world. I was floating, floating as if I were buoyant and the earth were water. Roots curled through my flesh and fed my nerves horror and joy.
Then the babe was in my arms and snuggled warm against me, and I held him as roots plunged from my arms to the earth, and I held him to my breast. He suckled black sap. From his back sprout roots and his face distorted at hideous, impossible angles. My eyes recoiled and my mind stuttered and I could not look at it, and it bit into my breast and I could not run I could not run, my roots held me fast. I screamed and woke.
I lurched up on the straw and supported my weight with my arms. The quiet and dim light seemed full of tension as my dream fled my senses. It was a moment before I realized my arms supported me when they couldn't have before. Coals glowed low in the fireplace and a little light spilled in from the next room. Every bit of my body, inside and out, ached horribly, but my muscles obeyed me now. Leaning against the wall I struggled to my feet, then slowly, slowly, limped into the other room.
The man was slouched over a desk. A candelabra before him burned low, its wax dribbled and cooled in abstract patterns on scattered opened books. The room was full of jars, hundreds of them, most full of different green leaves, but some had red or white powders, scattered haphazardly about a few ramshackle tables and shelves. Books too were every which way, every color of spine, piled high on the tables and two deep on the shelves, with more stacked on top. There was no fireplace and it was chilly. There was a window but it was dark.
I forced my trembling legs to carry me to the door. I had to lean on the tables and displaced several jars. The door was latched but not locked and I let myself out. It was cold and I wore only the bandages about my chest. A little light spilled from the open door and I could see a few trees. Evergreens of some kind. The ground was covered in browned needle like leaves. Insects buzzed and chirped loudly, but there were no human sounds. I stood there for a time, looking into darkness. No moon or stars lit the night. I stood. Cold seeped into my feet. I shivered in the wind and did not think. Where was there to go? What was there to think?
Now was my punishment. What form would it take? My old master, the dead one, would tie me to a machine so that only my own strength held me away from poisoned barbs. He would hold me there for hours, cutting thin cuts into my back until, exhausted, I collapsed onto the barbs and felt the poison, jerked back involuntarily into his knife, then collapsed again into the barbs.
It had been a poor punishment. We had learned that pain was the damaging of our masters' tool. Not ours to own. Long before that I had locked myself away from myself. From my body and from my mind. It had been a poor punishment. I had locked myself away. Locked away, it had been a poor punishment.
“Do whatever you wish of course, but your body is still very weak.” The man's voice was behind me, he must have come to the door.
“Where should I go?” I asked back. My voice was small and weak. I don't know why I asked him.
“For now, back inside. Though I suggest it, I do not command it.”
All could command us, the lowest of the slaves. The highest and the lowest. The best in our abject subservience. Slaves could command us. Pretentious bastard. I felt my own heart pound louder in me. Murder, murder it said, but it's call was faint. Now was my punishment. Murder in my blood but later, my master held it back. Somewhere the woman's heart beat but was feint feint. He was kind and I hated him for it.
“Yes master” I said at length. I walked abruptly inside. He held very still as I passed him, hiding his reaction in stillness. Then he followed. Inside I kneeled to him and waited to hear the bastard's will. He paused and considered me for a moment, then walked past me into the other room. He returned with a heavy black robe.
“I'm afraid black is the only color I have. Goes with the office, as it were.” He held it out to me. He said it as if it should be a joke, but he did not smile.
“If you're going to be walking around it's probably best that you're not naked all the time.” I took it and placed it before me. He studied me for another moment, thinking.
“Please don't kneel like that. I'm not your master.”
“Yes Master.” I said, rising. He pressed his lips but said nothing as I attempted to stand. He dropped his expression and rushed to me as I toppled over instead.
“Here,” he said as he caught and steadied me before I collapsed completely. Pain sprouted through me as he helped me to his chair. The world was too sharp now, all sharp needles pressing into my vision and nerves. I realized I was moaning and gasping with pain.
“It's okay,” he said softly. “Here, I'm going to put this on you.” He pulled the robe over my head, then fumbled for my arms through the sleeves. Then I was standing and stumbling into the second room, most of my weight leaned onto him. He lowered me onto the straw.
“There's a chamber pot here,” he said, lifting it so I could see. Pain throbbed in my head and pulled at my consciousness. “I'll show you the outhouse tomorrow. Sleep now.”
“Yes master” I whispered. I didn't see his expression. I closed my eyes and was gone.
If I drempt that night I do not remember it. I came awake slowly. It was chilly in the room, but I was warm in my robe and blanket. The general pain in my body had receded so that I could now localize the agony to the cut in my chest where my breast was gone. A great hot brand weighed on me as a dull but heavy weight. My limbs still hurt, but more with stiffness than with pain.
I meant to pull myself up. My muscles protested but had strength. Instead, pain exploded on my chest and I fell, black shutting out my vision. Obedience, obedience. Why would that occur to me now? Why had it not for so long? Fuck I hurt. Obedience is food. Obedience is drink. Bah, what foolishness.
The pain subsided slowly and shallow breathes kept it stalking but not attacking. I stretched out my feet and gasped and fell again. How did moving my leg hurt my chest? Where was I going? If I were to await my punishment then I should simply wait. Lay in bed until my master deemed it time. But I had risen. A tiny act of defiance. Hesitating to kill the baby, I had meant to do it, I had felt no hesitation in my mind. Obey obey obey. But my hands had hesitated. My body had pushed itself out of bed. Why? What was I if not a tool? My mind played for me images of the murdered woman, that strange woman, that strange limbless woman I had slain. Had I strangled her or cut her? I could not recall. I felt nothing. The baby had been as empty as her, a vacant unreasoned being. I doubted it was any instinct. I was no motherly slave. I didn't care about the babe. It was nothing. It it it.
My bladder gave me an immediate destination. I stretched my leg out again, only an inch, another inch, and it was okay, pain but not so much pain. My hand, my left hand, could scooch my ass towards my foot. A single inch. My lungs bellowed air in and out, another crushing pain exploded across my chest and I was panting and crumpled on the floor again. A red blur of pain. I did not have to think when the pain pulled all my consciousness away. Easier to suffer than to think. Fuck. After a moment I remembered my left breast was intact. Why couldn't I use that arm to propel me? Why had it not hurt like this before?
My bladder finally let go with me crumpled on the floor. I felt warmth on my thighs but only barely. A small distant signal against the blaring light of pain. Something must be wrong. It made no sense for me to be crippled by my wound when yesterday I had walked and spoken as a whole woman. Had the man poisoned me? Better that he would, I would not mind death. Death, freedom, death, the same.
I heard muffled voices. The man was speaking to someone who I could not see. The door was open a slit. An inch. Another inch. Another inch. Each gained through stabbing pain, a hot brand burning deep into me with each inch. Another inch. Another inch. Either to my salvation or my death. My healer or my poisoner. Either way, another inch, another inch. To end suffering. To end the pain all that I relished.
They both fell silent as I realized I was gasping and moaning loudly. I collapsed through the door with a scream and the room went black and the man, what did he say his name was? The man rushed to me, eyes darting as I realized I could see again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Pain,” I whispered, holding my arm to my chest. His brow furled and he quickly picked me up and carried me back into the room to the pallet. Quickly but with great care. I hurt but it did not black out my mind. Then he pulled off my robe and then left me, stalking into the other room.
“My cousin, she was badly hurt, the war,” he came back in, walking quickly, and cut the bandage from my chest. He turned the knife he had fetched away from my skin, but it was very sharp against me. I thought I would see blood but did not.
“You have a fever” he said touching my forehead. I did not feel hot but said nothing. Maybe he would cure me, maybe he would kill me. Better than the pain either way. Why did I care about pain?
My chest was unwrapped and he said “infected, crap.” He seemed to realize I was naked at the same moment and pulled the blanket above me, he had to lift my legs to free it, to cover my body and remaining breast.
“I will go get some supplies and be right back, don't move.”
He hurried from the room. Was it strange I was so indifferent to my pain? Certainly my body writhed and would cry out had it its own voice. But I almost found comfort in it. In pain there was no question of disobedience, of self. Did these questions really trouble me so? They were roiling inside me, just beneath the surface of my mind.
“Yes she is my cousin, a refuge. Her family was killed and her almost.” The man's voice came quietly from the other room. A woman's voice responded but I did not hear the words.
He returned to the room carrying a bowl and a jar. He placed them on the floor besides the pallet, placed the kettle over the fire, and then returned to me to spread a sticky goo over my wounded chest. It felt cool and the pain eased almost at once.
“This will numb you and help pull out the infection. I'll give you some tea for the fever. Try to sleep if you can, but at least lie still.”
The man lifted some tea to my lips and I realized time had passed and drank it. I felt heavy at once, my thoughts roiled still just out of reach above me but I sank down down and I could not touch them, I reached, I could not touch them. I was a sail in a storm, flitting this way and that, torn to rags and sticks and tossed on the winds. And then I slept.
Do you tire of my injuries? What was I if not a tool? What was this pain if not my master's broken tool? But tools obey. In me there had been not only hesitation, but defiance. Had I wished to obey the baby would be dead. I wished I could sprout flowers in my mouth and tongue again, to drift off into that warm and easy blackness. I could taste it now that my mind turned to it. What was I and why did I care? Why did my hesitation penetrate the cynicism that I wore about myself as armor? What was I now, a willless tool, undirected mechanism broken beyond repair, waiting to be hammered into something new?
Do you tire of my recounting of my injuries? I must seem a thousand different people, first concerned with this, then that. First cynical, then lustful, then dour and brooding. Brooding over inane abstractions of myself. It is a problem of identity I think. Most have some idea of who they are. A fiction, an absurd fiction, that they are a noble or good, or that they manipulate and dominate for the good of those they control. They think they pretend to be someone they are not, they like or loathe themselves. They are more who they pretend to be than who they think they are. I have no such abstractions. I am nothing. I am a vessel for my master's will, bred for generations for obedience, trained from a young age to be a thoughtless, moralless tool. What must seem bad characterization is after all the constant product of a single mind. In this moment I was this way, in that moment that. Sense is something we apply to these things later. I did things this way because I am this kind of person, and I like or loathe that I am like that, but there it is, it is what I am. I am nothing. I am a terrible and empty space. Beyond good or evil, as happy to kill as to make love, as happy to be victim as to be villain.
Do you tire of my injuries? Who is this man, why does the story not move forwards? I simply did not care who he was. Some thing that was not my master. Why did he care for me? It didn't matter to me. He did and that was that. When I had pathetically inched myself across the floor and called to him, I had gone either towards my death or my salvation. I hadn't cared. There was only a tiny spark of self then. I had dragged myself there, not simply lain in pain and indifference. It gives lie to all I have said here. It gives lie to my non-identity. There was a self there that desired not to be in pain, to be healed or killed, but not to be in pain.
He didn't speak to me much. He replaced the salve on my chest often and fed me broth and different pungent teas. I did not speak or listen to him. I was in a kind of daze. He must have been drugging me with something for I did not think or speak or feel a desire too. I just slept and almost slept.