Blood Filled Wires (Closed)

[WretchRoad]

There was a fresh-looking print in the middle of a billboard outside the old warehouse. It advertised Dr. Claudius Mosaic’s Aesthetic Buffet, A Modern Art Studio. The paper was stark and white against torn ads still hanging on by rusted staples. Missing person’s photos accompanied by pleas for information, weathered down to be unrecognizable. Hell, she hadn’t seen another person in days of scouring the wasteland, none who were real, anyway.

Dr. Mosaic was covered in robes when he stepped outside, waving to her like a neighbour come to visit. “Come in,” said the bundle of fabrics in a voice both masculine and light. “Come in to see my studio.”

She didn’t move until he added: “I have food.”

As he led her, he gracefully ignored her yellowed eyes, her flaking skin, bleeding knuckles, and her shattered leg, held together by sticks and a ripped up old AC-DC t-shirt. He kept a steady, cool hand around her arm, thin enough for his fingers to touch.

The halls were freshly painted, the floors immaculately polished, and every room was furnished in curving, stylized couches and tables. He must have raided a high end antique store while everyone else was busy looking for supplies and the weapons to protect them. Or simply died. His studio, the largest room, had walls lined with works by Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Seville, but most prominent were his own designs. His sculptures. Ridley, in disbelief that opulence had survived hidden away in an industrial bakery that still smelled faintly of sourdough, she reached out to touch the polished scales on what she thought was a bronze of a mermaid. It shuddered at her touch.

She wasn’t allowed to say no when he asked her to stay. That was made clear with the ropes. There was no room for mercy with the machine Claudius had turned himself into, barely any of his original parts remained. “Useless,” he’d called them, “ugly and useless,” he’d said when he showed her his private works, his original, warped and disfigured limbs floating in yellow fluids, exposed bone cut with a surgeon’s steady grace.

It wasn’t painful, not terribly, what he did to her. For one, he fixed her leg, immediately and miraculously. Then, he made her blue. “Like a glacier in the North Atlantic,” he said, “Like your eyes. I’ll leave them blue. An artist bends to nature as much as he must bend nature.” Her hair was stained in some permanent way to a blue-mauve that reminded her of baby clothes. But the designs were the first true torture he inflicted on her, raised swirls and curls that branched out over her collar, over her breasts and down her arms, they radiated out from her spine and wrapped her hips, plunged between her legs and descended her legs like fractured glass. For days and he etched her skin while she thrashed and shouted, working until long after she’d gone limp and her throat was raw, when he proclaimed her complete. Afterward, her pictures joined the others on the wall, one she tried her best not to look at.

She was given a room, following her debut. A cell to ruminate on what she'd become.

She was fortunate enough to keep her mobility and her mind. Most subjects were barely alive when he found them, kept just above the threshold to survive as artworks for as long as he could keep them breathing. And some? They were made that way when Dr. Mosaic decided “no art is without risk!” in one of his creative fugues. Fewer of his walking and talking kind of artworks survived as months went on with a lack of new “material” to draw his focus.

Ridley had been plotting her escape since the moment she arrived, though her motivation was tempered by relative comfort, considering the wasteland outside, and the food and water Dr. Mosaic provided from filtration and aquaponics systems that impressed even her. She’d offered to help with maintenance but was cowed by his outrage that she, a living sculpture, would think of using the perfectly designed hands he’d made to clear disgusting sludge from pipes. She just wanted an excuse to get her hands on some tools. They were all kept from “the dredges of labour” except for one: a man, just as altered as the rest of them, who followed Claudius like a dog, who assisted him from the other side of his surgical table, who’s door didn’t lock from the outside. Who didn’t seem to want to leave.

Some stayed in the hope they could still be fixed, put back to normal. Other’s were terrified of what might happen if they were caught trying to escape. And a few didn’t like the kind of life they imagined on the outside, looking like strange demons. Ridley? She waited for the right circumstance so she didn't end up worse. Like the shattered, warped figures pushed into backrooms and storage.

They were discouraged from talking, locked in their own rooms when Claudius wasn’t admiring or photographing them, which was how she met Shiloh. Face to face in a near embrace as Claudius snapped their pictures, risking only a few words at a time.

“There aren’t many left,” Shiloh whispered. Her skin was half green and half pink, split down the middle. Each eye the opposite colour of the surrounding skin, like a neon yin yang.

“The longer we stay,” Ridley paused when Claudius strode over to adjust her position. “The more likely we join the Frozen Ones.”

“It sounds like you want to leave.”

“And do you?”

Shiloh paused for a few more snaps. “Yes,” the word almost choked her.

“The other one,” Ridley said, “he rolls a bin of compost down to the basement every night, and there’s an old coal shoot.”

*Closer, my loves!* Dr. Mosaic cried. Ridley pulled her arm around the other woman, bringing their lips millimeters apart.

“Won’t he empty it? See us?” Shiloh’s mismatched eyes searched her face. Her breath was sweet.

“There’s two of us and one of him,” Ridley replied.

That night she used an old pop can tab to loosen and remove the pins from the hinges on her door. Shiloh had done the same before meeting her in the quiet hall, lined with Frozen Ones. The sculpture's eyes followed them as they stalked down to the aquaponics room.

The Doctor’s henchman was inside. With his back turned, they both gently folded themselves into the unattended bin. It smelled like rotten salad. Food scraps were piled among the ripped up and partially burned and tear-stained blueprints for Dr. Mosaic’s next editions. They used those to cover themselves when the lid opened and more plant trimmings were thrown on top.

The bin began to roll.

 

[stuffscribbled]

It reeked of rust and concrete like it always did. The bin and the scraps inside it were at least a change. The acidic smell of rot covering up the stink that this place held. And something else tonight. Just the slightest trace of it.

Ezra heaved the bin along the corridor. It was heavy, heavier than usual.

The strip lighting flickered, went off completely, and flickered back to life. Dr. Mosaic was undertaking some experiment. Some huge drain on the generator.

Ezra stopped to rest. His shoulders ached where the scars were, where the scales had been fused to him and ran down his back. His jaw ached too, from where the stubby tusks now protruded from his jawline. He rubbed at the spot, webbed fingers splayed. He could no longer remember what it felt like to have free fingers, to have a smooth jawline and normal skin. How many years was it? There was no sense of time other than the tasks Dr. Mosaic gave him on a regular basis. He rarely saw daylight, never got to feel it on his skin.

He was hopeful that this was the end of his tasks for now. He wanted to go back to his chambers and just sit in the darkness. He wanted to be alone from Dr. Mosaic, from his other subjects. He just wanted a quiet life.

He continued pushing the bin, groaning aloud as he got its wheels moving and squeaking. There was that strange smell again. It wasn't rotten food, or oil. It wasn't rats or the damp stink of fungi. It was something familiar, something almost pleasant.

The corridor kinked to the right and began its gentle descent down to the basement. Ezra could feel the bin starting to move under its own weight. He gripped tighter and strained his muscles but the bin began to accelerate down the long slope. It bumped over the uneven tiles and the drain covers and Ezra stumbled hurriedly along, trying his best to slow it down and to hold on.

The bin bumped again over a broken tile and the jolt went straight through Ezra's shoulders. The pain was immediate and nauseating and with a shout he felt his grip loosen and the bin rolled away. Quickly it built up speed, rolling out of control towards the double doors at the end, still locked. He thought he heard something then. A yelp perhaps. A shriek of some creature.

Ezra chased after it. Thoughts of the bin smashing through the doors or exploding into a thousand pieces and the punishment Dr. Mosaic might doll out. Less terrifying but somehow worse was the fear the bin would fall over spilling its contents and he'd have to spend is free time cleaning everything up.

Ezra almost reached it, arms outstretched, fingertips almost in contact with it, when it began to tip. Wheel caught in a crack, moving at tremendous speed, the bin lurched upwards and this time he was sure he heard a loud yelp and it crashed onto its side, lid flipping open, rubbish spilling out, and something else with it. A person. Covered in food scraps and in a crumpled heap. No, two of them. He recognised them, especially the blue one, beautiful in a way that most of Dr. Mosaic's creations weren't.

The two women looked up at him, eyes frozen. They were trying to escape. The fear struck him in his stomach and he had instant flashbacks to the beatings Dr. Mosaic had given him the last escape attempt. It had been foiled but Ezra had been blamed. Ezra had been punished.

"Ezra?!" came the shout from down the hall. Dr. Mosaic had heard the commotion.

One of them - the blue one - pulled herself to a crouch and looked at Ezra. He looked back, and to the doors ahead and back down the corridor, to where Dr. Mosaic's shadow was surely soon to appear.

 

[WretchRoad]

Now this is a ride, she thought. A little painful in a vehicle with no shocks, but speed must have meant they were getting further from him, plummeting into the basement and closer to their escape. She had to pinch her lips closed not to laugh like a maniac. Shiloh didn’t join her enthusiasm.

The stopping mechanism was not OSHA compliant. Her skull rang like a tuning fork after tumbling out and smacking into the wall.

She hadn’t used his name, The Other One’s, not in person, not even in her head. To give him a name acknowledged he was a person. To Ridley, he gave that up when he gave up trying. The Frozen Ones? That was her term for the people she didn’t want to think about. Couldn’t think about. Ones.

But now? “Ezra?” She repeated Dr. Mosaic’s tone, his name tripping over her lips. One hand to her head, she braced her vision back into focus.

A visceral cry broke out to her right, squeaking through Shiloh’s clenched throat. Her forearm bent at a hard angle. Ridley moved as fast as she could, slid her hands under her accomplice’s shoulders, ignoring the sudden nausea that came on when she moved. “Come on, we’ll fix that later,” she urged. She kept her voice low but no less emphatic. One limb down still meant three more to fight with. They were still winning the numbers game, for now.

And Ezra. The Other One. Just what the fuck did he mean when he looked at her like that? Maybe that was doubt, the crack she could pry open with the right words and the right circumstance and the right incentive and the right… Claudius was coming.

“Ezra,” she spoke again, measuring her cadence. “Ezra, you can come, too. There’s three of us, now.” Both arms supported Shiloh, pulling her up against the wall. Shiloh, who looked at her like she was trying to tame a bear with kindness.

“Open the door. Lock it behind us and we can leave together.”

Only a dozen steps and a quick climb, nothing at all between her and freedom— If he helped them.

 

[stuffscribbled]

Ezra looked at her like she was speaking another language. Leave together? Leaving meant going outside and outside was a frightening world mostly forgotten to him. A place of death and ruins and people tearing each other apart, fighting for what little there was. Inside was familiar. Maybe it wasn't truly safe, and there was pain, but there was a certain security in it, in Dr. Mosaic. Ezra was somebody in here. He had worth. He was somebody who would survive.

He recoiled from her, though she wasn't reaching or moving towards him. He looked at the other woman; sweating and face contorted in pain, one arm hanging limply. She wasn't getting out, not like that. And if she somehow did, she wasn't surviving.

Ezra looked back over his shoulder and the cold shadow of Dr. Mosaic started growing. The footsteps building. That was the only sound he could focus on. Not anything the girls were saying.

Ezra took a step towards them, foot squelching in a strip of rotten meat. And then he heard Dr. Mosaic's cry.

"Ezra? What are you doing?"

The pain in his voice was too much. The sense of betrayal, the disappointment in Ezra, the anger.

And with that Ezra's mind was made up. He reached out and grabbed the injured one, put a hand on her good arm and pulled her towards him.

"Doctor," he tried to call out, voice cracking. "I've got them."

 

[WretchRoad]

At fifteen, Ridley forged an ID just to play blackjack with the big leagues, a few city blocks from her family’s crumbling townhouse. Risk, she figured, was the only way out. Once a week she biked from leaking roofs to shimmering lights, and with math and memory, she made enough in two years to pay for a B-list engineering program. One she didn't get to finish before the end of a slow collapse, a century in the making. There wasn't anyone left to teach or even attend classes when conscription came for them all, and bullets came for the ones who defied it.

Before a bullet found her, she resented wasting money on useless electives like Language Arts and Anthropology, but one class stuck. A cast of a Neanderthal skeleton missing an arm, bone healed over. The professor explained he’d lived twenty years past the injury, proof that early communities valued more than brute strength.

Injury wasn’t a death sentence as long as they helped each other.

They could be just fine, no matter what they looked like or who's bones weren't exactly in the right place— Until Ezra pulled Shiloh away. Ridley latched onto her. “No, please! Come on. We can still make it. We can all make it.” Shiloh’s neon skin paled to pastels, coated with a thin sheen. “Shiloh? Shiloh, bite him! Do something!” But the woman’s breaths were coming fast and shallow, she wasn’t fighting back.

“Really, Ezra? You’ve barely got one of them,” Claudius chided, now just ten meters away. The overhead lights gleamed off his polished, steel arms as he raised a tranq gun. Each little bullet a silver canister of neurotoxin, tipped with a needle and calibrated to paralyze any of them for at least six hours. The waking nightmare serum, he called it, because pain and horror were just more colors to paint with. “Now get out of the way.”

Ridley lunged for Ezra. She’d rip his pockets clean off to find the keys for the door. To get them out.

 

[stuffscribbled]

She launched herself at Ezra with a ferocity he hadn't seen or felt before. The force took them across the hallway and his back impacted the wall painfully. She swiped at his head, at his body, at his clothes. Ezra, more frightened than anything, held his arms to shield himself from her. He tried to push her back but she kept up the attack.

Over her shoulder he could see the other girl, swaying, propped up against the opposite wall. He heard the thwump and saw the moment the silver dart hit her in the chest. Her eyelids drooped almost immediately and she fell to the floor, landing in a heap of limbs and drool.

"Useless," he heard Dr. Mosaic say. It was almost a catchphrase when he was around Ezra. He'd utter it with disdain and with venom whenever Ezra failed to follow instructions or messed up.

Mostly Ezra had heard him say this while assisting the doctor in... his operations? ...his art? ...in his operating theatre? ...in his art studio? One time he'd nicked an artery with a scalpel while assisting the doctor in trying to fuse a reptilian tail to some poor soul. Dr. Mosaic had stopped the bleeding and uttered 'useless' countless times. Another time he'd said it as Ezra dropped a vial of snake venom, test tube slipping from his webbed fingers and exploding on the floor. "Useless."

Ezra felt the girl's hands on his pockets. She was trying to get at the key, to wrestle it from him.

There was another thwump and a silver canister hit the blue girl in her arm. She immediately wobbled, eyes fading a little but then seemed to regain her strength and continued her attack.

And there was another thwump and this time it was followed by a stinging in Ezra's neck. He put a webbed hand up and felt the dart protruding from his neck. His arm fell uselessly to his side and he looked to the side to see Dr. Mosaic, a face of grim mania, sliding from focus.

Ezra was only vaguely aware of landing to the floor in a heap and the sound of his clothes ripping. Something being taken from him. His hand landed on the filthy floor and as he lost consciousness he could see the blue girl still fighting the serum. Still fighting it, but ultimately losing.