Wounds by Jemiah Jefferson

Author:Jemiah Jefferson [Jefferson, Jemiah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477806494
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2011-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

Scene Eighteen: The Beautiful Warehouse That Burned

Daniel woke to a strong smell of butane and Sybil’s astonished face, ten inches away from his eyes. He stretched stiffly for a moment before he realized with a shock what she had been looking at. She had seen him asleep, withered and hideous; she had seen his flesh become sentient again, going back to the same features as on the day he ceased to be human, one cell at a time perfectly recalling an April night in 1930. Something like a genuine miracle. He sprung to the opposite end of the moth-eaten chaise longue from where she sat, facing him on the floor, and now shaking her head.

“Oh, my God. I can’t believe it,” she said. “You came back to life. I watched you come back to life. ’Cos, dude, you were dead. I would swear it. I mean . . .”

Pain gnashed his foot, first dully, then with a stabbing, tearing intensity. He brought it out from underneath him to find his left-most toe missing, and a spurting stump in its place, twitching as the muscles of his foot tried to wiggle flesh that was no longer there. He stared up accusingly at Sybil. She shrugged.

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I did that at least an hour ago. You didn’t breathe, you didn’t move. . . . You didn’t even bleed.” She stared interestedly at the wound. “Is your blood really black”

Daniel applied pressure, clasping both hands around the end of his foot. Immediately the cascade of blood stopped. “Great; now I can’t walk for hours,” he grumbled, secretly grateful that she had stopped with a toe.

He had set his sweater aside, draping it over a chair to dry before falling asleep, he remembered that; but where had the sweater gone? He could handle cold without ill effects, but that didn’t mean he liked being cold. All the heat in his body seemed to be concentrated in the phantom where his toe was supposed to be, all but sizzling as blood rushed to it and grew upon itself. He felt the thick slimy clot wriggling between his palms.

Sybil went on, cheerful and oblivious. “That’s fine. We’re fine in here. You don’t have to go anywhere. The snow is getting totally deep, but there’s almost no wind coming in. We get some space heaters up in this shit, we are set.”

Daniel glanced around him at the blanketing gloom, then risked a glance at his watch. It was three in the afternoon, though by the light, it might have been three in the morning. “Set for what?” he demanded. “Are you abandoning the studio so soon? And I thought you were so comfortable there.”

Sybil stood up and put her hands on her hips. She wore a different set of leggings—white and thickly woven. “Why do you even pretend to understand me? The studio is good in that I don’t feel like I’m going to get shot and I can work there, but this is—this is a place.

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