That strange heart beat in me. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Not the double beat of my heart. A single alien thunk. I couldn't stand. I rocked back and forth, back and forth. In the dark I rocked. I was nowhere. My body ached. Dully, though, through a thick skin of rubber, every bit of me hurt.
I felt a need in me. Not strong, a vague unrest. A thousand blasted things, things crumbled into nothing. A million miles away. A million miles and I was lost lost, thunk, thunk this strange heart, this vague need, thunk, thunk,.
I was outside, though I did not remember how. Was I naked still? No, I wore a heavy red robe. A whore's robe. White walls stretched above me to the heavens. Walls made of white sand that brushed away beneath my fingers. A giant maze of undifferentiated walls, all paths branching out at random into an infinite and impossible series of decisions. And as I turned among them I grew dizzy, and then fell against a wall under a terrible vertigo. The walls spun around me until I could not tell which was up or down. Walls of white, walls of white, thunk, thunk, this alien heart, and I clutched at the wall to keep myself from the earth, and they seemed to pull away and twist beneath my grasp.
There was a man there, colorful purple garments, tight hose, a plumed ridiculous hat, and he was staring at me in total astonishment, as if I were an octopus he found casually strolling the street. I threw up on him and fell forward, but my feet were under me somehow and I was stumbling on, rushing to keep myself above them. There were more men. Staring. Bright oranges and red, some holding hands, others alone, all staring as if struck dumb by the sight of me. I smashed headlong into a wall and braced myself against it.
Only men. Where were the women? I threw up again and was less dizzy. Thunk, thunk. A group had formed that was staring at me. One grew bold and stepped forwards, saying something that I did not comprehend.
And then I understood the need in me. The vague unease in my bones. I saw a vision of my master's, my real master's, symbols smeared in blood across the sandstone walls, and I understood my need. I had come here to kill.
I lurched towards the man before me and he backed away quickly, skittish. His heeled boots echoed on the cobblestone. The lot of them jabbered but I could not understand them. They spoke in words I knew, but could not then comprehend. I stumbled forwards and they cleared a path for me, but I turned from it suddenly and caught one by the sleeve. The world spinning uncomfortably around me, I jerked the surprised man to the ground and was on top of him, hands wrapped about his neck, staring into his clean shaven face. Then I was falling up and back with hands all about me. I screamed and flailed and they fell away, scurrying from my snatching hands until, alone within their ring, I stood panting in the street.
I had felt relief as my hands were yanked from the man's throat. I didn't want to kill, but there had been no hesitation in my hands. They were yelling to each other now and some were pointing at me, a few ran up the street shouting.
“I am not a killer” I shrieked. My voice startled me and I felt the vertigo return, and I seemed not to know which way to place my feet, but somehow I lurched forwards and those before me stepped back, so that I was still the center. I was sobbing then, how long had I been sobbing? It seemed a long time. Thunk, thunk, the strange heart inside me. I fell against a wall and was barely able to hold myself up.
“I am not a killer” I screamed again and I was falling forwards, catching one off guard as I fell over him and my hands, seemingly of their own volition, were about his neck, squeezing the life from him. He had a finely groomed beard and oil slicked curls on his head. I screamed and shoved him away, falling over myself and rolling across the cobblestone. Then I threw up, and, heaving, fled twisting and stumbling into that white maze. It was if they had all vanished. They must have parted to let me through, but I had no memory of it. Once my back was turned I lost all track of them. Some distant part of me wondered if they followed. But it was deep, far away and drowned.
All I remember next is falling into walls and turning and turning until I was certain I was turning circles in the same small courtyard. The doors here were only curtains. I fell into a wall and in trying to prop my dizzy body up, I fell through a ragged curtain into a small dark room. I fell to my hands and knees and spent some time retching, my stomach too empty now to vomit more.
And then someone was patting my back and I fell onto my side. It was a man. Alone. My hands were choking him before I knew what I was doing and I threw him down. He stared lightly at me, his expression completely incongruous with the situation. His cheeks sunk in; he was very thin and he was very pale. Clean shaven. More corpse like than human. His expression was mild.
“I am not killer” I whimpered.
I didn't understand him when he spoke, but his voice was gentle. He laid back and stared distantly, eyes half vacant. The moment crept slowly. We stared at each other and the thunk, thunk of the alien heart beat in my ears. He smiled at me in a distracted way.
“You speak?” His accent was thick; he spoke as if his tongue were swollen.
“I must murder; I am no killer.” It startled me. The voice was mine, strained, weak and frightened. I stared at the man, who seemed to have forgotten I was there. He noticed me dreamily and smiled politely and nodded, as if he had caught my eye in a crowd and wished not to give offense. His face fell as he looked away. My mind boggled and the silence of the moment seemed to deafen me. He was staring at his finger nails with a look of mild awe.
I fell back against the wall opposite him. The room was very dark and very plain. There were a few wooden chairs and a painting I could not see. I chased my breath and stared down at the floor before me. Undecorated white tiles.
I was no killer; I must murder. A succinct contradiction to paralyze me. An ennui as complete as that which led me docile to a demon master. Why this reticence? It would be no difficulty to fasten my hands about this man's neck. A physical act. A simpler nerve impulse. I, who's future was my masters and not my own, must think of no consequence. His will, my obedience. For me it was only to lift my hands and clench them shut. It was my master's will that would place a man's neck between them.
And thunk, thunk beat this strange heart. Its alienness nauseated me. I felt its sand scrape through my veins. My veins? Her veins? All my body hurt and I felt the scrape of sand inside me. Thunk, thunk. I am no killer. I am no killer. Thunk, Thunk. Yet beneath that my own heart. Tha-thunk, tha-thunk, Obey, obey, obey. My mind spasmed at the twin pulses. Sand and blood, tight veins stretched and squeezed, an unbearable pressure. I was retching, scratching at my skin. Get it out get it out screamed my mind, and from a wound my nails gouged into my arm spilled sand. Gray and black sand. The pressure eased and I fell back, crouched against the wall.
The man was eating something black and sticky.
“We walk rivers and the sand fills us as rocks decay. The light like silver or dark like bones.” He crawled, graceful and off balance at once, to me and toyed with the sand spilling from my arm. He put into my mouth some black tar. It tasted of flowers, but sour and thick. It seemed to clog my mouth and throat and for a moment I could not breath.
And as the sand poured from me my master's will pulsed stronger in my blood. Murder, murder, I must murder. Acid in my veins. I had fallen on my back although I do not remember when. The room was gray and far away. The man's sallow face was above me again and more tar was in my mouth and the room retreated further. The room that was full of warm darkness. A great sea of black. I floated gently into it. Precision was far away.
And in that warmth my need floated with me. I must murder. I am not a cheap slave. I am bred and born to it, and feel my master's will deep in my bones, beating through my veins.
“It takes away pain.” The man spoke. He looked at me across a great gulf of black, his sunken cheeks soft with distant pain. His eyes tumbled backwards into that great sea. We were the same then, two lost people floating together. I, who by my nature must always be alone, was not alone.
“I must murder,” I said aloud. My voice was distant, almost distorted. A million miles away he looked mildly at me. Suspended in the same great blackness as I. Those deep deep eyes. “Come” he said and we were falling forwards through a ragged curtained door, though I do not recall rising.
The room was very dim, and I could see only where the light from the last room illuminated. There was a tank of some kind from which a woman's crotch thrust. Her legs had been neatly amputated. The man led me to her and I stared down into a vat of thick, viscus gel. Her face was completely obscured by a mask, from which a thick hose extended into the ceiling.
The man reached into the slime and pulled her body up, unlatched her mask and pulled it from her. She blinked and teared at the light, and began rambling at once.
“Flowers and rocks, flowers and rocks. Jagged bits of flame, cracked fire splitting, spilling the sky, the sky, jagged jagged sky, sharp sky, like a knife, cuts and cuts and cuts. Blasted red stone fire stone broken blasted trees, finished. Broken blasted flesh and gore and gore and fire consuming gore and blistered, blistered, blistered.”
Vertigo overcame me again, her soft and terrible voice rambling in my ear, my pulse beating violently in me, a distant violence, a distant violence. A terrible slaughter just at the horizon. I stumbled backwards but the man steadied me. I stared down at her. She had no arms or legs. She was naked, a long steel rod stuck from her brain and a viscous liquid dripped from her cunt.
“It is a mercy to murder her,” the man said gently. He was sitting in a corner of the room, warm and distant. When had he sat? How much time had passed? I tried to think but my mind was thick and useless. Vertigo overcame me again and I fell forwards and caught myself on the edges of the vat. I reached my hands to her throat. The goo was thick and warm. Her mad eyes stared into mine, wide with terror and empty of any intelligence. The flitted about me, as if unable to recognize me as a human, seeing a curve here, white there amongst a brown blob, but unable to comprehend what she saw.
I fixed my hands about her neck and choked. And choked. It seemed to last forever, her limbless body convulsing in the fluid, her wild eyes full of terror, but somehow not of me, terror of the world. She did not know she was dying for she did not know she was alive. And I was floating in a black sea, and a million miles from me she flopped as some primordial fish drowning in the air, and a million miles from me I murdered her. It seemed as if nothing had happened. Her eyes stilled, stopped blinking, but that was all. That lifeless face held the same uncomprehending terror in its lines, a grotesque and inhuman mask. There was no peace in death, no comprehension of the end of suffering.
Tears heaved themselves from my eyes, though I hardly knew why. I stumbled backwards and the man was holding me, though I had not seen him rise. Time was out of joint like that, all moments with no transitions. Why was I weeping? Sand poured from my veins and I cried, but it was so far away, through a thick black fog. The man feed me more black tar and I was weeping over him but hardly knew where I was or what I was doing, and then we were kissing and sand kept pouring from me and he covered the little pile on the floor with his hand.
“A knife a knife a knife” I mumbled, my blood tearing my veins apart, the pain incredible and distant. I was gutting her and I was shaking. Where had I gotten the knife? Another displacement of time. Some thing had happened but the memory of it was gone. Her skin parted easily before the knife, it seemed too easy, and her guts were spilling out. The gel she was suspended in kept the blood contained somehow, so that her organs were a soupy mess.
Pleasure and horror mixed together inside me, the monster and the child embraced; I was shocked and thrilled as I buried my hands in her. The organs were warm in my fingers and I shuttered and trembled. I hardly remember scattering them about the room. I was a giddy, manic disaster, all tears and laughter, so that the room was a gory horror before I knew what I had done.
The man was sitting, now covered in sand and blood. He looked vacantly at a corner and hummed a sad song beneath his breath. The woman's desecrated and bloody body lay before me then, and I was drinking from her, drinking her blood and bile, warm inside me. The logic for this escapes me but I did it. My robe was wet and heavy so I pulled it off and lay naked on the tiled floor before her so that her blood poured down onto me. It was warm and thick and I felt comfort from it, and I rubbed it it in my hair, and I rubbed it about my body and thighs and breasts.
And the sand that leaked from me grew wet and clogged shut my alien veins, and, softly at first, then growing, the thunk, thunk, of this strange heart in me, and then my mouth filled with the taste of bile and I vomited, raw acid cutting my throat, but it was so far away, it seemed a performance more than reality. Buckled down blood and bile poured from my mouth and spattered my skin. And the black tar, thick and greasy, came up and stained black my skin, and still I retched and thunk, thunk in my ears. All strength drained from me. Weak and wet, cold and naked, I shivered. My head ached.
The once far distant world was back, and I suffered for it. The strange man sat giggling, curling up then flexing his hands over and over, watching his hands curl and stretch. His lips were stained black and his hair was thin. There was blood everywhere, and organs lay haphazardly about. I retched again but my stomach was empty.
Slowly, numbly, without thought, I drew my master's signs upon the walls in blood. They were the signs of one of his children, remembered from my dream, but I know nothing of the theology of it. And then I sat. I wasn't waiting, rather I had stopped functioning. My duty done, there was no need in me. That strange heart beat but brought no compulsion with it. I just sat.
There were two other women in the room. My eyes now had grown used to the dark and I could see them, though they still seemed more relief than fully sculpted. Both, like my victim, were amputees suspended in a thick gel. Only their genitals and their stumps of legs protruded from the gel. They were obscene, monstrous things. The vats in which they were suspended were adjustable by a large lever besides them. Presumably so a man might fit himself into them without discomfort. Their arms too had been removed, and hoses, attached by needles, protruded from their necks and beneath their arms. Their faces were covered by black eyeless masks, with long tubes extending from them.
I could have gone, simply stood and wandered back to my faux master. The idea simply never occurred to me. The strange man still sat staring at his fingers, by turns giggling and staring vacantly at them. I sat, unthinking, until soldiers came, picked me up, and, after I ignored their jabbering, carried me away.