Project

Carcass

Carcass is my first published short story, graciously put into print by the University of Edinburgh Journal in Volume 50, Number 4, Winter 2022.

This was the inflection point where I began to consider seriously that I might have some talent in stringing words together. Of course, this newfound self-esteem shot into my head like a carnival high striker pummeled by Mjölnir, making me believe I could make many moneyz from eye-mind talkies. Then all the great food yam yam in ma belly, you see?

Now that I’ve equipped you with a little bundle of levity, I send you on your way to the endless night, where even the Eldritch Gods are not safe. All participants must keep their eyes on the following descriptive text, as any wandering gaze might result in spontaneous petrifaction by cosmic horrors of indeterminate nature, for which the author does not take any responsibility. The premium against the Great Old Ones is ridiculous.

P.S. For anyone speaking the runaway colony slang — it’s a British publication, so centre is the correct spelling here, you absolute rapscallions.

 

🐋

 

Carcass

 

I cut into the flesh of the beast, stripping off meat, going deeper, closer to the skin. The surface has begun to taste rancid. I reach the frozen part and take a hammer to chisel in the knife. After a few gentle taps, a chunk of flesh splits off and floats slowly towards my face. The slab is a lot thicker than I anticipated. And I’m still here. Good to know.

I gather my tools and the icy hunk of protein that will sustain me for a week or so – if it doesn’t go bad before I can finish it. My appetite is not what it used to be. Probably because of the monotony of my diet. Yeah, that’s it, the monotony. I turn around and make the mistake of gazing out of the eye, into the sickly green glow of the nebula that tore my troops apart, into parts. Here and there, among the enormous gas clouds, flashes of stillborn stars draw silhouettes of beings that have started a renaissance period for my nightmares. If there were any tears left, I would cry, but those ran out weeks ago and now I can only dry heave. Cursing myself for looking out, I keep swallowing the excess saliva until the gut wrenches fade away.

I kick off, soaring down towards the centre of the dome-shaped cavity big enough to fit a house in. It has crimson walls full of folds hinting at pondering meat. On the ceiling, there are two crystalline openings on opposite sides, eyes like skylights, shining down nauseating rays from the terror outside. In the air, there is a stench. I wonder how bad it is going to get. Does the cold creep in before the air becomes unbreathable? Will the smell break me, drive me to dig through the skull to escape it? Making me end this torment in the silent dark. Drifting for an eternity as a block of ice, until eventually I’m sucked down a gravity well, disappearing from this existence in a ball of flame. Or will I keep wandering into the coldest parts of the universe, where a grain of sand moving at stellar speeds encourages my atoms to finally let go, turning me into dust that can’t remember the pain it once was? Remains to be seen, I guess.

In the middle of the room, floating in mid-air, there’s a golden seed. It pushes back on the dread creeping in, keeping me warm, radiating hope into my heart. Without it, I would have offed myself months ago. Under it is my only chance out of here. It grows from the floor, a pedestal made from flesh and cartilage. On top lies a typewriter, assembled out of bones.

I gaze at my thumbs, filled with bloody bitemarks, some weeks old, some from just a few hours ago. I approach the typewriter, lay my hands on it, and recite the prayer it demands, ‘I give myself to the word. I’ll listen, I’ll write. To witness is my destiny; control is not my birthright. I am dust, the muse bedrock. My place is in the wind, on land, the swell of the sea. Now the word flows through me.’ An accusatory silence fills the room.

I begin to write: I thought that the Leviathan would make it. I was just trying to save my people. If I knew this was to happen, we wouldn’t have come. The typewriter bites my right thumb. It has teeth on the space bar and through the bloody choppers it hisses, ‘Lies!’

I continue: That’s a lie I tell myself when I need to sleep. The truth is, I knew the risks and still took them because this path is my purpose. It’s funny; as a young man I used to think that certainty would bring inner peace, but instead, it bred the willingness to sacrifice. Even though my choices have taken lives, lives that mattered, in ways that have soiled the memory of them forever, I still regret nothing. I guess that makes me into a monster too, but my people need one right now. I must become the Behemoth that crashes through the gates of Eden and steals the fire that burns in the souls of men. And like Prometheus, I shall pass the torch to my creation, to the machine mind Pinocchio. Together we will restore order to this world.

I wait. No bite. I keep going into the endless night.