Emphaticisation

On the outskirts of Rajj, onto the base of its valley dune, I dumped and stood over Hejat Vanderheir. Red-faced and wailing the shrieks of an uprooted mandrake, he held himself through the pain and shock of the flight with the dignity of a soiled infant.

He pawed at his face and howled ribbons of tears. Heaves slowly eased into shivering sobs, and though he peeked up from between his fingers with meek puppy-eyes, those peepers snapped into an osprey’s glare once he saw who I was.

“Ohhhhh!” he moaned.

And, “dwwaaaaoh!” he mourned.

And, “tu-hu-huhuaaaou,” he whimpered. I still hadn’t done anything.

“You pest!” he bit, voice cracking. “How come such a devil harangues me at breakfast? And to involve it before my daughter... my poor orchid... she was getting dressed for school! You, you—brutal beast! What hurt you’ve done is—irreparable!”

He gasped, panting on the sand, sweat teeming more even than tears.

“How will you mend it to me? The palatines, will... take me away, even into death, but onto you and your witch they will avenge me. I assure, if I am taken, they will cut you to slivers. They, they are bloodhounds, and I am just... a man.”

He shuffled lower to pillow himself into the grit, with hands cupped in a pyramid over his nose and mouth. His legs splayed below him like a triton’s tail, limp.

“Please, it is not meet to make me, a dust, into danger. I assure, I assure, I will tell them—not—where you go... the fight is of no need. Yes? Yes?”

He leaned forward, hand wafting in offering.

And yet wafting.

“Tcah,” he spat, rearing back to his seat. A frustrated comment, restrained behind his teeth, rebelled against his cheeks and lips in punches that contorted his face up and down and this way and that like the scrunches and smooths of an intestine. Only the drenching of sweat that sheeted down the back of his neck restrained him from dismissing me. More endocrines comprised that perspiration than liquid, so reeking was the pall of it, which by its passive pressed asserted his gut as a wise animal worried about him, and that a wise animal, here, would be scared.

Clever basal instinct and crafty human smarts together, in him, slowly unclenched their holds, then ceded into an armistice of, ‘as long as nothing’s happening, I think we’re alright.’

Though he feared to more than glance toward me, a quiet settled over the spot.

“Are you okay now?” I asked.

His mouth popped open, but to such a strange question his tongue caught no words. Redness sweltered over his face with awareness as much as a backhanded slap, and leaking squinted eyes, horror primed again to bawl, but too confused to understand why ‘horror’ would be appropriate, and thus stubborn against his own instinct.

“It’s okay. Come here now.” I offered my hand to help him stand up.

He took it.

I whipped him onto his feet. An agonized keen punctured the air like the blitz of a downed peregrine; his posture crumpled; his legs folded like sticks, and he dropped back to the sand with a ‘thlump’. The impact of him striking the wall had principally landed in, and broken his pelvis.

“AaaaaAUHH!” and so on, screamed out into the desert.

Surely he already understood himself pained, but the shrapnel of the razor bomb only detonated when he stood, or attempted to. Hejat twisted to gaze over his shoulder at Rajj, that familiar bastion distant by a mile and by no means unreachable, but again my motionless presence squeezed his clever gut to urge him obedient, and curbed the dream of crawling across the sand back to home.

It’s clever, because if he had fled. He would’ve just given me something to do.

Oh well. This way is good too.

“It’s okay. Just take it slowly... and carefully, there you go, you can do it. It’ll be okay. There you are.” Now when he accepted my hand, I smoothed him up as if unrolling a mothbitten scroll. At certain specific angles, no agony accost him for standing, and he gasped like the fact was a miracle.

He balanced upright precariously. His legs stuck out like stilts. Lean too far in any direction, and he would drop as totally as the contents of an overstuffed cupboard.

I proceeded up the hill of the dune and turned to await his following.

A steadying breath sucked into his chest, forward he tread—

“AAAaaaaaAGHH!” The motion of ascending, and the impact of the femur into the pelvis socket upon stepping, guaranteed aggravation of the break. He collapsed in agony.

“It’s alright. Just step by step, take it step by step...”

And I reached out to lift him again.

Welcome to my kitchen, everybody! Sorry I’ve been so subdued. It takes some preparation to sharpen up these knives, My name is Mephi, and I’ll be your chef guiding you today through the exciting art of cooking spirits. Now we all know the devouring is administrated through the Hunger, and that the Hunger devours with the finesse of a trashcan, but to simply shunt this garbage raw down the gullet undersells the sophistication of the sheer damnable joys of this profligate, so while it naps we’ll spritz up our feast with a good seasoning of hate, play, and sadism!

“AAAAAUUUUgeAUu,” he toppled. I offered my hand.

The oven of good food is passion. Ohh, all the ways I despise Hejat Vanderheir! Mmmostly I hate him because... he’s heinous, indespicably criminal, needing of death, but he’s also pathetic. I had openly estimated him to dwell lower than the bottomfeeders, and still he had done me the pleasure, of proving me totally right, by failing to constrain his desires despite being warned for even 24 hours. (Rather the thrill of the palatines guarding him had likely excited him more).

“AAAAAiyyAAAAGH,” he toppled. I offered my hand.

Like do you realise how contemptible that is? 24 hours? Especially to me? How long have I been constraining my desires—I’ll tell you—it’s longer than that!

“AaaAAAHnnnGH,” he toppled. I offered my hand.

So he’s impuissant, he’s arrogant, he doesn’t listen to me, he’s gushing, he’s thoughtless, he despises truth, he doesn’t hear honesty, when I’m charitable he slaps it back in my face (though given I knew he would fail it was not really charity), but he slobbers towards me when I’m beating him up, I can be genuinely kind and he gawks like my nose is a tentacle. He thinks I care when he starts sobbing. He’s a slimy little loach boldly invoking principles of magic he doesn’t understand.

“AUUUUUYGAauh,” he toppled. I offered my hand.

And the best part is, I’m allowed to shred him, because he’s worse! Thank you! Thank you, for being such a stain on the earth, that your very existence can feed my ego. But how dare you slip yourself under me! Don’t you think I have a principle, yes shocking thing I know, to maintain some consistency, if I’ll erase myself from existence for winning the #1 Reprehensible spot but then it’s revealed—you peel me back and on the next layer there’s you?

“HEEN, HEEN, HEEN,” he stumbled two steps and toppled. (My breath caught—that scream was beautiful).

He is my wonderful turd.

He inflames my chest with an incredible heat that warms me with noxious delight.

So I will give him the worst thing I can think of: I’ll make him a part of me.

Then I’ll keep him in my hold forever. And secure more justification to kill myself. Win-win-win-win-win-win-win...

“AHHHHAGYha,” he toppled, and I offered my hand.

Rajj had shrunken below us into a quaint model playset I could squish with my thumb. To eagles all the world must look puny. Yet, when they descend to eat or nest, their obligate matters of partaking in life, that very soaring vantage must humble them to know, they’re even smaller now than the thing they called small.

There’s a field, in a field, in a field, in a field... we had exited Rajj’s, now. Shadow from the opposite valley-dune caped the city. Behind that dune the sun trickled higher.

“AEEEEEEEEEEgh!”

Wind fluttered up at my clothes, hair, and shanks. Hejat groaned slumped on the ground, “ooough...”. I offered my hand. Upon his feet, he wobbled for seconds. Sweat gushed down him like the spray of a hose.

“EEEEEEEaaaughh...” he trod forth and he toppled. I offered my hand. “...ah, ah...” but he didn’t accept it. “Ah, ah!” he shoved himself off the dirt. A searing hiss rose from his palms, alongside the savoury smell of roast lamb. “AH! AH! AH!” Frantically he pitched then half-burpees, only one hand contacting the sand at a time, and sawed backward, “—EEEEAAAAAUH!” into his shattered pelvis, which kicked him forward again into the wheelbarrow dance (then forward, then back, then forward, then back). In my surprise I withdrew my hand.

Beneath us the sand grains had brightened white. Hejat’s skin contrarily browned. The sun was pelting.

Hejat spoked his clothed elbows into the sand and craned up like a circus seal, huffing.

—It’s the dune. If the opposite dune shades the city in the morning, that’s east, this is west, so this one is slanted to receive the sun early, and peak temperatures must hit even before noon. And...

Our clothes rippled in the wind which exhaled yet as a continuous flow. Hejat wriggled, and moaned again, “ouuuu,” but then he squinted and his head rolled as if to faint.

It wasn’t a ‘breeze’. I’d inadvertently marched him into the anabatic drift of a thermal tunnel.

Shit... the weather would outdo me. Oh, well. Shouldn’t have numbed myself to that calculation...

At least I understood now why the palatines hadn’t come. We weren’t inconspicuous, on the expanse; binoculars would expose us, or just a good eye. Surely they knew and were frustrated.

Vapour arose off his armour of sweat. Miserable eyes floating upward lost their tears and sheen; no oasis remained in his throat; such an environment parched too dry to give even the mercy of swelter.

“Just hold on, okay? H-here you go...”

Using the ptarmigan witch’s magic, I summoned him ice.

He accepted the icicle with the reverence of a knight on his knees. The cold burned a kiss on jelly-blistered lips and palms, but the water sucked-in replenished his flesh and succoured his soul so greatly the pain only poured welcome like glory.

When he wasn’t dying he remembered to cry.

We proceeded, lifting and stepping and falling and screaming and sizzling on sand furthermore. Fear of burns exasperated him from continuing, fear of me exhausted him from fleeing, and the pelvis-pain, though vicious, between these external judges at least sliced him when he picked the fight, and he hadn’t patience to stand still. “GGGHRK,” he grunted and toppled again forth. He knew he would fry bedded on sand as reward. Every step took such resolution.

Learned to the pattern, flat on his belly, he cricked his chin and his gaze swiftly upward to me.

He extended his arm for me to take.

The vanilla sun pulsed heat down in waves, which reflected across his roast neck and mandible.

Gasping past me as no help, he hitched himself up on his elbows and dragged himself uphill like a bagworm.

I stepped on his shoulder to pin him.

He froze.

I released.

He twitched forward. I pinned; he froze.

I released.

More even than a lioness’ claws shredding through antelope hide, the skinning of a human ego is so deliciously tangible! Ohh, how many layers to pull, until you are not a saint, but a wretch, not a wretch, but a slave, not a slave, but an ape, not an ape, but a pet, not a pet, but a toy, and not a toy, but a wart, and a suppurated pimple on my ass, that I’ll bite and I’ll gnash and I’ll scratch and that doesn’t even have its own name, but just shoots out a pus when I squeeze it. Spirits break as loudly as glass shatters on tile. The sound of Hejat giving up, by that wordless slump of the head and release of the shoulders, could have echoed over the desert at five billion decibels.

‘I can’t do anything. I’m not even here. So just take over...’ oh, truly! You get it?

To be adored and despised at the same time will ravage the psyche of anyone.

“Hsst, hss, hss,” he gasped in the hot sand. (Good—not gone too far yet).

I offered my hand—

“AAAAAAAUGHHH!”

—and the cycle continued.

Probably Rajj has never heard such a cacophony as was writ on that dune. Yesterday in ten minutes I had trekked down it. By Hejat’s infirmity, the ascent took four hours, long enough and barbarous enough a venture to dignify the slope with a name, perhaps like ‘Harrowing Hill’.

“Um, good work. I’m really glad you held through.” Upon cresting the hilltop, to gasp breath from the unfolded ocean of sky, Hejat collapsed.

He laid like a debrided polyp. Exhausted, dehydrated, dribbling fluid from the crusted mouths of open burns, and all-round poached blacker than tar, he laid like a sock of half-melted lard.

The hill-peak met a wide plateau of sand compacted around the shelves of Rajj’s rock. A westerly wind dispersed the smother of the thermal tunnel, and the flat ground ducked away from direct light—but after so long on the dune, the sun was tilting higher, and soon would sear this region too.

I grabbed Hejat by the collar and dragged him along, flipped to face the sun. A piping of “ghuuaaeaoo,” groaned from behind me, as the tugging hedged the weight of his torso into his pelvis, and he writhed in my grip as an unruly ferret from the radiant heat swatting his belly and conductive heat gnashing his rear, but really this abduction brought him melting into relief, and luxuriation, that he simply didn’t have to climb anymore.

At a copse of tall rocks that spiked out of the sand, and formed a shaded shelter, I deposited him.

He huffed to lay content as a fed hog, insistent of the dark stone being as cool as a river and soft as a crib. I summoned more ice for him that he guzzled up, such ambrosia it was, and in the flush of relieved exuberance little puppy-eyes peeking up questioned me.

“I’m sorry. I think I need to torture you now.”

Huh!? Quicker than the blooming of the panicked pupil—a twitch of the finger, a crackle of mist, and conjured icicles speared up through his ankles and wrists. “GHEEEEEEEE!” Ah, animato! Good aim squishing in on the nerves! Let’s tune those strings up to their highest pitch and jack the bow along ‘till the ligaments pop! Now that’s a good strategy. Whew, hah hah, hah...

Tingles shivered through my blood was fizzing, the rocks blurred.

Split the, elbows and knees next... the existing stalagmites disintegrated, Hejat squirming at the joints like a poseable mannequin, until the leverage went and he dropped to the stone. Boom! Boom! New frozen javelins.

That arced—behind him. I missed him. He’s, he’s paralysed and I—

Waves rolled underfoot. The ground met me on my knees and my hands.

“Ghuh, uh.” This one was me. I bit my wrist to steady myself.

Yeah, this was, a bit graphic.

Wow, I... couldn’t do this.

That’s so ridiculous.

Blood from his injured extremities—I mean, it barely trailed enough to fill a teaspoon, but that immaterial, oozing, crimson worm inched, inched, inched closer and for each inch a cord around my neck tightened, tightened and—God, I spat, I clutched my neck, wheezing for full breaths of air.

(Suddenly kicking the gap under the rafters—)

All but his body tunnelled and fuzzed but I have to torture Hejat. The whole copse spinning except for him but I have to torture Hejat. Panting and sweating and burning bile leaping up abdomen curdled, I commandeer a listing ship, it wants to capsize, but I still can go further, I have to—

(After I’ve attempted everything, then it’s ok to fail—)

My arm extended with fingers crooked as my iron-sights, against the sway. Hejat, arrow, aim—for a moment, they frozen, aligned vitally.

(When you only know it’ll sicken you more.)

Just three days ago. I would’ve done it.

Instead I lost the wibbling line of the syzygy and wilted a sigh into my chest. Frosty mist that had congealed around me dispersed. With head bowed blind to the gore I exhaled the nausea in waves.

Practical problem, you know, if I torment myself too it assures I will fail. Too busy fainting by my own squeamishness to do what I’m bidden—yes, sacredly so, I am bidden. Does a slave not mimic his master? And does my Master not shred the foul? Though see, no abuse to his body would ever compare to what I would eventually do to his soul. My mission here, butcher as I soon am, is to properly tenderize my meat. It’s not, always ‘necessary’, but for a comfortable rabbit like him, to whom ‘challenge’ and ‘pain’ have long been estranged, and by whom souls have been as plenteously gobbled as prunes from a bowl, the comprehension of oncoming death, and equation between action and consequence, and the alien sensation of powerlessness, often cannot be accepted. It is useful they understand, not by visages invented in their own head but by truth in uncompromising, debasing fashion how much they are despised, so much no shield can ward it beyond, ‘Oh. I see, I deserved this.’

“Hah, hahh...” I heaved breaths.

I, wasn’t giving up. I was just, adjusting my method, to something, ah, mm, mmmore...

Faultless.

A shutter fell. My recession; the cornerstone shifts, a grim spirit breaks from its kennel. Turbulence gulped into vacuum, it kills flight from under the birds. A black iron monolith, that grinds across stone; and wraiths curling like breath off of a tongue.

Hejat’s sweat spiked in fear. I don’t know how they tell.

Bead of ruby from the rock crooked into obsidian claw, a memory’s in the heat, oh hum, I was rather hungry.

Ah! Just a speck of life!

Hejat pinned under me flat at the wrist and the belly, spread, and clamped smooth as drafting paper. Don’t wriggle don’t wrinkle. The nib is my tongue, in one long even line, down the fleshy forearm, that splits. You couldn’t gut a fish as smooth. A long crimson slit, dissected open, so puffy, and dribbling, from between those sentinel cavity-muscles plumped up tight and soft as velvet pillows. Sickness flipped saccharine. I dipped in.

Oh, God, Hejat screamed! Orgiastic unction from choirs trumpeting ‘yes!’ obliterated my cortices white by merely sucking up the sweet capillary juice. I wasn’t biting, not even nibbling, but probing between the thicket of sinews in an, ah, inquisitory fashion, of a young pioneer. What discoveries lurk behind that boulder, or, what stories up that trail, and what specimens inhabit these odd boroughs, and ah, there’s that cliff of bone... marked on the maps as ‘ulna’, filigreed more startlingly in viridian nerves than the diagrams say... my tastebuds scraped over the surface as a porcupine gnawing bark off a tree. Hejat shrieked in the first agony so awful, it locked the sound mute.

Mm! Lovely. Now where else is so sensitive?

...Or, uh, would be the surgical idea, that... I would—should embrace practically, for torturing him, but, but, w-w-who cares about practicality? And ‘sensitive’? Is this about Hejat? Sure the singing’s sentimental, but I’m hungry! Shut up!

It is kinda about Hejat. No, quiet! Candied inferno on the tongue slurped up fibrous beads like pomegranate seeds, and the arteries, gushing nectar and—thhc, I can’t take those yet. Disappointed like a beast but clinical like a man but strict like a seraph, a weird concordance in this. Sobriety isn’t slavered away into rabidity, but neither is desirous gluttony laid damp in the dust. The match is catching. Ugh!

I nipped at the muscles. They’re vessels like lemons pop little sacs full of juice. Strip a length next? Unlatch the ligaments? He’ll live that right... how, how to make it, slowly? It’s, it’s hard to pull away, although I can, but the flavour is delicious, and the vintage is so rich, if I finish him now it’s, just kind of a waste and—fuck! I was talking about eating a person!

Oh well. Yeah I kinda, I do that now. Ha, haha, ghhh...

I broke away as if exiting a pond, less like a man breaching to breathe and more like a hippo wading dejectedly out. Sometimes I wish I could respond sensibly, you know, naturally, like how real people do to, basically anything. I didn’t stop because I was scandalised. I stopped because finishing him so quickly, when I wasn’t that hungry, felt indecent. That really was all.

Sugar yet slathered every inch of my mouth. Oh, oh, God... to have more of it! Hejat Vanderheir, my shish, my caviar, soon I’ll be starved enough to take you out deeper into nowhere and have you for real!

I lounged so on his chest with a warm purring heart; and the fantasies flit. Every limb my gaze slid across dripped its own pleasure like distinct cuts of steak. Each one made me smile. I was so curious and so possessed that I enjoyed my own slavering; my imagination conjured full banquets, and the speculation of how it could be, how it could taste, bolstered the enticing mystery of the ‘real’. A million delights in narrowing to one sublime act the million ways to take, the shoulders, the neck, the chin, or, or the...

Guilt cooled me sober enough to scamper off of him when I thought about eating his face.

Hejat laid spread over the rock.

It was a person. Hejat was a person. And it’s, okay, just, nevermind who he is, nevermind what he’s done, it’s the principle of it, okay? There’s something important, about, not, not—.

Sat myself under the stone, my chin shrugged into my palm.

But it just doesn’t matter. All this discomfort just doesn’t matter unless I actually let him go... and I’m not, I’m really not doing that.

So it’s like, oh wow, Mephi, what a bold resolution, sitting over there instead of over here, that says you’re totally human. As though it’s even a crime to excise these cancers. In fact, you should be pressing them more. And sure, maybe there is something wrong...

Something wrong about enjoying the massacre this much...

A dark storm churned through my gut.

The open wound down Hejat’s arm sparkled and dripped. I squeezed my eyes shut, sighing.

The rest of the body only breathed, anaesthetised numb by shock. So excellent my performance. In ensuring he’d feel nothing. I hefted myself to my feet. A stiletto’s thousand cuts to julienne the nerves, plainly not on this gristle, rather the work of a bumbling ogre braining skulls with a big hammer—oh well... I’d failed then the assignment to torture him ‘enough’. Oh well...

It’s another talent among many at which I’m provably incompetent, or not greatly inclined...

(Ah, Mephi, such pride like a switch!)

There was no point continuing this. I took his wrist to drag him away.

Sun spilled over the edge of the copse.

Blood glittered down the ridge of the cut. I squinted queasy.

Ahh...

What about one lick? Just a taste? For the road?

Okay...

Sometimes. I really wonder. How I can cackle down my bulging idiot proboscis always at everyone when I am at every time at every chance I could prove SO INERRANTLY STUPID. HEY! And wow, and WOW! Thunderbolts pounce through every nerve—NEVERMIND—guess I’m staying here! To savour my immersion in yet another eroto-demented romp about snuggling a man to death via the pollutant called ‘my mouth’, because THAT’S how I cherish humanity, as assorted dainties, platters of cupcakes, all chocolate-dipped and perfectly browned with decorative fairy wings and tart sugar powderings and jams in exotic flavours to sniff at and snort at and savour and slaver and one day to Czjeir I’ll announce cheering, ‘oh yes I love people now! Like macarons!’ and that’s really it, that’s REALLY it, that’s how BRAINLESS I want to become by feting such delightful murder-lust and I HATE THAT I LOVE IT. BUT THEN WHY’S IT SO GOOD?

I fell to my knees panting with my hands over my eyes to concentrate against the gush of horrible thoughts, of all the ways, all the ways—you really, don’t need to know. Slowly my grin tempered; the fire faded; the aftertaste ebbed.

God, I’m so stupid. Phew...

I was taking this guy! Out to the desert! To fast until he died or I died! I knew I would buckle, I knew I was weak. But it’s... about all, I could do. Right?

And the rubylike wound tickled my eyes.

As if enthralled, my body moved. And—no! No! But still came the arc of my neck and the wetting of skin, the flash of fire and the thrill of heat and, and, I panicked, because, because—I couldn’t stop! (I wasn’t even hungry!)—but of course I could stop. I rolled my eyes. Just a couple days ago I stopped against a pull five hundred times stronger.

I let the arm flop out of my grip and wrenched my gaze to the peaks of the spires. My breaths hissed, my fingers spread, I trembled to my feet with a view only on heaven above. Again, slowly, the adrenaline ebbed.

Maintaining a gaze locked on the sky, I fumbled blind for Hejat’s wrist. Found it. Arose without murders. Mantra in my head: don’t kill him, don’t gnash him, don’t kill him, don’t gnash him, the rapist, don’t gnash him.

At the end of the copse, between the trunks of the spires before me, the endless expanse of desert stretched on.