The Lady's Champion by M F Sullivan

Author:M F Sullivan [Sullivan, M F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781732669147
Publisher: Painted Blind Publishing
Published: 2020-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

XI

The Plight of the General

Within her first hours hanging from that cross, Dominia’s thoughts turned so often to her human childhood that she began to think this was that famed pre-death flash of life before the eyes. Perhaps it was not the rapid-clip flashback she had always pictured. Perhaps, rather than the snapping back of the mind to the beginning of the next iteration, it was only the stultifying cycle of treacherous memories churned by the sorrowing ego near the grave.

Once, many years ago (oh, so many years!) when the General had been a human girl named “Morgan,” she was a morbid thing. To a child still so close to the fresh side of the Void that the realities of existence seemed more dreamlike and unreal than the concept of nothingness, death and its uncountable manifestations held profound intrigue. There were so many, seemingly benign ways in which one could die, or find oneself mutilated, or endure some other sudden shock of tragedy in this brave new world.

She had also, like many children around the age of five, been fascinated by those few forms of consciousness alteration available to small minds, namely: spinning in rapid circles until the house twisted upside down and she crashed in the middle of the living room to the sound of her mother’s criticism; or standing too quickly and stretching with too much vigor so as to produce that dizzying starburst behind her eyes; or hanging upside down over the arm of the couch until all the blood collected in her head and the room began to vibrate.

“Don’t do that too long, now,” her father (the real, lost one, not the capital-F fucker who stole the title) said to her one afternoon, not long after she had mentally applauded herself for beating her own “record” time.

“Why,” she had asked, before leaping to, “will I die?”

“You’d want to sit up before you were likely to die,” was the response from behind the slim glass tablet on which he perused the news with a slowly scrolling finger. “But, yes—if you stay like that too long, it’s possible to die.”

Young Morgan’s mind had turned in eager fascination to the question of how a person might look after dying in such a way. Would they bloat up like a big grape? That was what she had pictured at the time. A child’s cartoon. Not this.

Dominia had already pinpointed the places in her forehead where blood might eventually shoot out in little jets: mostly around her temple and cheekbones, but certainly from her eyes, which felt after only four hours as if they would burst. Electrified manacles binding back her arms notwithstanding, the inversion had not been a totally unpleasant experience for the first twenty minutes. It wasn’t so bad, she told herself. She had one leg free—her left—and by means of this she was able to brace herself against the fifteen-foot-tall crucifix and do something like a sit-up. Held for a time, this relieved a bit of the pressure of her eyes, and gave her an opportunity to think of something to do.

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