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In/Inner/Innest Nameless sits hunched in a bath, legs splayed, chin to chest, rocking to the beat of his black heart. He can feel it working. He can see it, if he tries: stained leather straps, hinges, tiny gears and one-way valves, a patchwork shell that threatens to explode (He thinks, pieterfrenk is not God but a friend of God's) *** Nameless rose up from the girl and found himself with pieterfrenk, trapped inside the bigger, blacker heart of a machine. Strands of metal cut the air like rain. There were cables and components tangled thickly at his feet, spilling down from shelves, fed through holes punched in the walls. Light came from shoplamps--rusted, antique cages--strung through hooks in the rafters by their cords. The whole room shuddered. Nameless, too, was trembling. He was scared to turn, to even look around. Whoever had done this could do anything, he thought. But what if there was nothing more for them, or Her, to do? What if he was dead? That girl had got the better of him? Sent him to this shiny, little hell for what he was? Or maybe she was dead and he was somehow trapped inside her? Another kind of hell--to serve the sentence he himself had passed? But that was all just fun and games. He knew he'd taken care of her. Stopped her graceless panic. Left her wrung out on the floor. Now that he remembered, there was no room for doubt. He could feel her absence like an abscess in his soul. Right next to what used to be the Stickman... But who was that, then--if not Her--crouching in the dark? There, just beyond the lamps, and old man bent away from him, tinkering in a haze of oily smoke. His head was shaven clean. Hard straps crisscrossed in a buckle which bit into the folds above his neck. He wore a dingy t-shirt over a longsleeve thermal. Tights of slate-grey winterthread. Boots laced to his knees. Wires and tubes led off of him, like puppetstrings, to nowhere. Was in control or was the room controlling him? He sensed--through his surroundings?--that Nameless was behind him. He stopped what he was doing. The lamps grew bright. He glanced over his shoulder as he turned, slowly standing, his image trailing after on the dry, sooty air. The gasmask was a relic from wars ago. He peeled it up and back, like a reveller at a ball. His eyes were slightly bulging: olive-tinted contacts. Some kind of passive infrared, Nameless thought. "How did you get in here?" pieterfrenk asked. Odd thing to say. Why not Who the fuck are you? Had he been worried, warned that Nameless would come? Nameless looked down at his hands--they were sticky and discolored. He turned them over, not sure what he might find. In the left was the gear he had taken off the Stickman. In the right, a small white business card, stamped pieter frenk in runny gold. A name that was familiar, but didn't feel like his at all. The letters seemed to shimmer as he handed it across. pieterfrenk leaned closer. He took the card, stared at it. Not as old as he had first appeared. But pale and withered. Skin so white it showed the tracery of veins. He was nervous, Nameless realized. Who was in charge here? A fury bloomed inside of him like poison gas. "What do you want?" asked pieterfrenk. "You know me," Nameless said. Softer this time, voice smooth from swallowing, "Please, just tell me, what is it that you want?" "You know why I'm here." Nameless tossed the Stickman's gear on the floor, between them. "I want to be where I belong. Without this. Or you. Or anyone else. You pulled me out and you can put me back. The right way..." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Your first lie," Nameless said. "Another and you'll be gathering your own skin up off the floor. Am I understood?" "Yes." "Then help me." *** pieterfrenk nodded, backing away, gesturing toward a barstool set before a long, low table. The tubes and leads moved with him--not pulling him, but taut. Nameless sat heavily. He closed his tired eyes. He heard drawers scraping open, the clicking of cabinet doors. pieterfrenk returned wearing something like an E-man. The unit was strapped to a belt around his waist, linked to a pair of headphones. Hinged to the headband, above the mic, was an eyecup on a swivel. pieterfrenk swung it over his right eye. He gave Nameless a tiny pill that felt like hard plastic. Nameless swallowed it and immediately felt himself drifting off. There was a tiny pinprick of heat at the base of his skull. He felt the room humming, extending in all directions, through walls to other rooms, other floors. He felt himself spin outward through the fabric of the universe--too small and fast and perfect to even know what he'd become... |