Laws of Saturn

November 2023 | R-18 | 65,913 words Characters: Mephi | Camellia
Warnings: Graphic violence, general vulgarity, suicidal ideation, body horror, gore, self harm, pedophilic ideation

Familiar has Mephi tel-Sharvara always been to the nature of evil. To find it, he simply must look in a mirror. But when Camellia dredges the hidden things of the heart to the fore through the curse of Archonhood, Mephi must readjust his understanding of himself and his own malice, and judge whether to adapt to what 'evil' truly means.

UNGRAVED

Evil knows its shame and hides under the protection of darkness. If you want me to describe what happened – is my reluctance because it’s embarrassing, or because it’s atrocious to hear? Don’t take that as my magnanimous sheltering of your sensibilities. I just want to know that you’ve considered. Is this for your excitement, or does it serve you to know?

I suppose if you’re recording it on behalf of the Church, there’s academic enough reason to want it.

Yeah, alright then. Suppose, envision for me, an absolute dark. It’s blacker than the night sky, but full with the motions of something. There are sounds: slapping, snapping, noises of squelched meat and muscle tearing, and these sounds in themselves signify the presence of a creature living and feeding. No image exists that could make these; the movements that these sounds outline is in itself the monster.

There is a knowledge to what is what. The angle of a jawbone from beneath, or the release of a throat unzipped by incisors. I know these. I know whether that is an arm or a leg by the degree of the arc I move to wrest it, and by how much weight it loses after my hands pin down its end. If it has the consistency of custard, and disappears in one dip, it is a brain, but if it lasts two dips, it is intestines. I am maybe the world’s best anatomist, now. For hyenas, bones are mostly like crackers.

There is desire. Hah, that’s a strange word for me. Am I even using it in the right way? But, well, that’s all I can call the impulse that underpins all this action. There is something there and I want it. It lingers in the human bloodstream, and in human skin human marrow human nails human hair, in every cell once energized by my inclination of human soul. I will guzzle it up from the tread of a shoe or the pit of an outhouse and I will do so smiling, kneeling, until I can pretend to care again about dignity. Then my ego vomits when I wake to know my face signed those activities.

My yearning for this substance has trained me to slobber like a dog over anything I might shove in my mouth, even if it does not sate me. Though, I mean... this quality I seek is more precious than a handful of sand. Obviously. That’s how I advocate, obviously.

I remember that I moved in these fashions, and felt in these fashions.

That is all I can tell you of what happened that night in Vamu.

I woke some hours before sunrise – I knew I’d gone far from Vamu. Bugs crept in the dirt under my cheek, and over the peaks of bowed wheat stalks, the sky was purple in the predawn.

I smelled soil, mist, and iron. My hands were slimed with saliva instantly, and I only realised why after I had contorted to suck the rusty stains out of the white blouse I was wearing (I was amazed it wasn’t ruined; this observation split my attention), then bit the stained patch out. I refocused and held the stiff patch precariously in my teeth.

My mind locked every joint of my body still like a mannequin.

If I diverted my attention from maintaining this exact level of bite, or allowed myself to think and relax, I feared the compulsions would overpower me and I would swallow the patch. Even if I spit it out, in that transient moment of relief and achievement, I expected to lunge and redouble for it since my body clearly had some investment in eating it.

I soon realised how stupid of a dilemma this was and allowed myself to slump to the dirt.

The compulsions did overpower me; as I chewed, I thought to wonder about where I was (a field, somewhere) or where to go (wherever) or what was the news out of Vamu (could be interesting), figuring my body and I had come to a compromise, and it would be satisfied, and leave me alone.

Instead my stomach whacked me to the fact I was starving.

How to describe it.

I was probably going to eat the whole universe. A vacuum colder than space and denser than suns flared within my stomach, jailed under my skin. Its claws raked against its prison, then rammed, bit, hissed, gored, frenzied to claim anything outside and rape it through the medium of me. Fulfilment was not its desire; the act of devouring was. I could make records guzzling hotdogs at Coney and still starve. I could empty a slaughterhouse and still whine for more. Locusts had more brains and restraint.

I pleaded, Oh, God! What do you want? I’ll give it to you if you shut up!

The substandard stimuli of soil and grain faded promptly to nothing. I wanted. Like a viper fixed on the warm pulse of a shrew, nothing existed but the prize I wanted. Sweet blood from Vamu drenched my clothes and body in flecks: never before could I say I was giddied by the fragrance of haemoglobin, but that had apparently changed, since now the proximity of ‘gorgeable’ between me and it electrified me with unremitting dopamine.

This thing wanted to horf down my blouse because it was covered in bloodspatter. It wanted to gobble my shoes and my socks and lick the soles of my feet clean because apparently I’d stood in a puddle deep enough to saturate that. It wanted to suck on the roots of my bloodied hair even if that meant ripping the strands out, then slobber down my arms and legs and rip off my pants...

And this was only the residue. This was the condensation at the bottom of the soda jar.

That was when I screamed.

Of course, I suppose the right thing to say is that I was horrified by what had happened, but it was moreso the implication that it would probably happen again. You know, ‘I’ll give it to you’? Well I can kinda tell when others won’t pull their end of a deal. So, fair’s fair, why should I bother?

I sort of turned off my brain so that I could think without feeling the hunger. This strategy didn’t work so fantastically since the hunger took my corpse and, well, the Lord when he made me was joking around and decided presentability should be one of my quote-unquote “values”, otherwise I’m genuinely so petty that even a root impulse’s enthusiasm for its needs annoys me, but it seriously ticked me off to watch the Hunger go for it with shredding my blouse while wearing that idiot's smile. So I clicked in to leash it again. My blouse was alright in the end.

This left me where I started, though.

I was less fearful of the hunger’s urgings, however, since I broadly figured I understood it and knew controlling it was just a matter of caring. I stood up with a mind to go anywhere. The sky had lightened to pink, and the wheat tickled around my thighs as I trudged through the field’s expanse. Insects had begun to wake and buzz. Distant screams echoed from somewhere, and though I thought to investigate them, I couldn’t discern their direction and so ejected them from my concerns. My waypoints were the eastern sunrise and westerly zephyr, both too large to mean anything to me.

The Hunger still raked, still yowled, and still wanted. I enjoyed my grand show of ignoring it. I don’t mean to emphasize that dismissing the Hunger was trivial, just that my go-to driver is usually spite. It’s probably the best emotion for doing things while knowing they’re pointless.

Even it faded. I stared at the trail of disturbed wheat behind me, and the uniform ocean before me, questioning why I had moved at all if there was nowhere I was trying to move to. Obviously I couldn’t sit down and gorge in further mockery of the Hunger (oh yes, I’ll concede, but I won’t give you anything) since this wheat all belonged to somebody and that somebody needed it for living.

Instead I agonized over how I’d disrupted the alignment of this man’s wheat with my trail.

This was genuinely what moved me the most and the greatest signpost to action I found looking inward. But the fact I was even debating the merits of standing in a field indefinitely disgusted me enough that, spiting myself now, I moved again.

My first steps followed the same course that I had been going before my pause.

I wondered, Why am I still going this way?

If one way was as good as another, right? Maybe this decision was to spite my past self that had chosen this direction. Anyway, I figured to make a hard turn and split off.

I couldn’t.

My feet stumbled against an invisible boulder, and every direction I tried except that initial one incurred that same resistance. It was like walking down the incline of a hill, where you could go right or left but gravity would pull you down on each step regardless, and if you did step downwards you would do so more vigorously than intended. No matter how circuitously I moved, I always trended in the same direction, and the harder I fought this force, the stronger it pulled me. I actually could not go backwards at all.

Let me emphasize, an invisible gradient of physical force had caught me and was guiding me to some nexus the same way that ions of opposing polemics converge.

This scared me.

I understood instantly that the Hunger was greater than me. You could argue by what faculty – call it ‘power’, ‘strength’, ‘will’, or ‘desire’ again, but fundamentally in an altercation between me and the Hunger, the Hunger would win. That I could silence its whining temporarily was my consolation for the fact it would, inevitably, yank me along and corner me into providing its wants.

It then occurred that the reason I still had blood upon me, which hadn’t been consumed before my input came into the picture, was because the Hunger had noticed and pursued something more enticing.

I sat down with arms crossed.

It seemed the only defiant action I could take was to truly do nothing.

Funnily enough nothing is what I’m good at.

I wondered what would happen if I did enough nothing. Would I die?

I mean, okay.

That works, right?

I’m maybe understating how severe of a pain I was in. Forfeiting my body would set the Hunger amok, so playing warden meant staying somatic. The thing guzzled the attention, and though it’s debatable whether it sincerely did redouble its jailbreaking efforts once it realised I was watching (idiot thing was asking me), or whether that was an illusion sprung by my looking there, but well basically from the inside out tractor blades were mincing me.

I was so goddamn hungry. Anything I needed ANYTHING oh my god everything looks delicious and absolutely I NEED IT all these things that exist I NEED THEM look LOOK I was panting and drooling and staring up at the sky supine my heart ran too fast to count oh my god look at all this stuff I could have oh my god I needed to have it and it would be NICE and I’d HAVE IT and LIVE and so on.

I groaned, screamed, rolled around in the dirt.

Though this perspective worked in pinning the Hunger from where it wanted to go, the pain battered me too deep and I fled.

Soon I was staring up at the sky all numb and still and comfortable. The pain was still raging but insulated under indifference.

My skin dribbled off my fingers. The drops of flesh ran together like streams flowing into the same basin, along that magnetic gradient. I spread, shut, spread the skeletal hand. It’s a horrifying thing to recount in retrospect but at the time I couldn’t be bothered. I mean, fair enough right? Why not? I was dead, or something, these things happened.

And besides it was just the Hunger trying to move me along again. Its agenda wasn’t anything secret.

I’d measured the limit of how much I could take. Though I would petulantly deny it any proactive assistance, I resigned that my body would scram however it wanted and let its sheepish convulsions inch me along like a rock on a string (see, it still wanted my stupid permission...). The sky was blue. Finches were twittering. From my vantage under the wheat stalks, it looked like a beautiful day.

A stalk snapped. I reared onto my knees, peered over the grains.

There was a man with dark leathered skin, wearing a cap and a white galabiya, marching through the field toward me. I surmised he was the farmer. A blocky white house stood just out of the wheat line, like a ziggurat’s brick, not too far in the distance. It stunned me to realise how far I had gone.

I also worried about the man. His presence might provoke the hunger into shooting for him, but as that fear paralysed me taut, the Hunger snuffled about him and refused him like a dog given broccoli. So it did discriminate, though I wasn’t sure on what criteria.

Next was my hand, but it had fixed itself. I tried not to stare at it too long like a retard.

The farmer called, “are you the one who shouts in my field, boy!”

And not the people I murdered? Haha. Given the blood and all. This was a nice man.

But I nodded and stood up, hugging my stomach already by reflex. His eyes bulged at the sight of me and he made the sign of Czjeir. “You are sicker than a cow on its belly.”

“I-it’s, uh...” I twisted the hem of my blouse. “It doesn’t, spread. Sorry.”

He meant my skin; it was always this pale (and I got this a lot).

The farmer drew closer, his head bowed in search of my face.

“Where is your home?”

But I dodged his looks again. “Uh, Vamu.”

“There is bad news out of Vamu,” he contemplated. In the silence following, as he took in my horrible state, I figured he discerned broadly what had happened and my obvious involvement.

I thought he might shout or run, but he said, “come in to my house.”

“Okay,” I waited for him to lead.