The Experiments (redux)
The person who entered was, thankfully, not the prince, but what looked like a guard with light armor on. She opened our cell and tossed a bucket of water she'd been carrying onto up and me and Mill gasped into full awareness at the cold splash. She ignored our questions and turned the lamps up and started the furnace up to full glow, the heat washing out into the cold room and clashing with our chattering bodies. She ran a rag over the table, and took a look around the room, still ignoring us before nodding, and heading back up the stairs.
I looked over to Mill and whispered
"Do you think she was getting the room ready for the prince?"
Mill looked at me unamused and rolled her eyes
"Noooo, I think she was gettin' us ready fer th' big dinner"
I shuddered "So you think he's going to eat us too? I saw that big grind-y machine and the pickled-"
"No, fer th' love o- I was bein' smart at ye, he's not gonna eat us, it's a- ah, ferget it."
"S-sorry..."
"Nah, yer fine, jus'... don't be s' scared, show 'im some backbone, make 'im scared of ye instead."
I thought about that, I didn't think I was very scary, unless you saw me in dim light and thought I was a ghost because I was grey or something. Maybe my worms would scare him? They didn't look very tasty, so... Maybe that would save me? But what about Mill? She didn't have any worms in her, and when she had had a bath she was very pretty, not scary at all. The kind of person you wanted to be close to, not run away from... I thought about it a bit more and then asked
"Hey... Mill, can you still put your toe on your nose?"
She frowned "I guess, why?"
"Well... I want you to try and kick me, really hard, hard enough to break the skin, and when the worms show up, you can eat them, so you'll have worms in you too, and you won't be good to eat!"
She slumped and looked at me the way a mother looks at a child that has just caught their finger in a mousetrap for the third time that day
"We. Are not. Gettin'. Eaten."
I shrink back and start to say "Well just in case, please?" but at that moment, the door burst open again, and the prince himself stepped into the room.
"Well hello girls! It is so good to see you right where I left you, I trust you enjoyed your bath? I just know we'll have such a lovely time today, I know I will at least! Just sit tight while I get everything set up, it'll just be a tick!"
He slammed the door behind him and pulled a wheeled tray out of a spot on the shelf and began loading it up with tools
"We'll start small, for now, I really want to see what you can do! I've heard good things! I think it will be lovely to see for myself, and there's soooo much to try, it will be just beautiful to experience!"
He opened the cell and stepped past Mill, reaching out to me. I thought quickly... Scary, how could I do scary? I tried the only thing that came to mind, and rasped in my growly-est voice
"Don't you know it's a sin to desecrate a corpse? Do you really want the wrath of the gods and the wrath of a dead girl coming down on you at once?"
He laughed and un snapped my manacles, lifting me with ease and ignoring my flails as he drug me to the table
"Dead? Darling, I can feel the pulse under that skin of yours, no matter how dead and rotting you look, you're still quite alive! And the gods? They can't see you down here, and from what I understand, they don't even want you, so what reason could they have for protecting you? I'm fine sweetheart, trust me."
He began strapping me to the table and I started hyperventilating, the world spinning as he tightly clamped my arms and legs down. Despite his thin form and old sounding voice, his body was hard and strong like that of a young man and I couldn't even slow him down as he locked me in place.
"W-what ab-ab-about M-M-M-" I stuttered
"Sister Millicent?" He finished for me, selecting a small knife from the table and examining it under a lamp. "Well, she's not a real sister of course. I had my men check the records, there was no celebration of womanhood for her, and as someone so close to the church, she would have jumped at the chance to do a holy ritual like that, and everyone knows that if you haven't 'become a woman' you can't be joined in the clergy, so our little sister there is nothing more than a sham, no one the gods would miss!"
"Sh-sh-she w-was a-a an ex-exception" I grit out between my teeth, clenched hard to stop them from clicking
"Mmm, well, the church doesn't work that way, kindly ladies aside! Anyway, let's get started! Something small, right?"
With that, he drug the tip of the scalpel across my arm a few inches making me hiss in pain. I look down to see the cut being pulled open with a pair of tongs, and the prince looking into it intently. I focused and surged the worms out of the little hole, reaching and stretching out to try and latch onto his face, to do something. He slid back, out of reach of them and smiled his horrible smile.
"There they are! I read so much about them, I looked and looked to see if I could find records of them, but you're special, sweetheart!"
He reached for one with the tongs and yanked on it. I screamed as I felt the worm threading through my body go taught at his pull, and I willed it to break off just below the cut. The worm breaking hurt far worse than the cut did, and I screamed again, louder. His smile grew more as he watched the worm part writhe in his tongs, the black and grey segments twisting and shaking. I could still feel it in the tongs, separate but still part of me. I remembered Mill's advice and I looked over at her to see her staring back with her angry scared eyes and I willed the worm to stop. It went limp, drooping over the tongs. I held back the pain as the prince squeezed it in the tongs again and again, shaking it to get it to move, before he sighed, and dropped it into a small jar.
By now, my cut had already started closing, with the worms working to seal and close it quickly, spurred to work by my urgency. He stared at the closing cut and touched it with his finger, stroking the bleeding flesh.
"That really is beautiful... Not the worms, that's horrifying, but the healing, the regrowth... That's why you're here you know, I'm sure you know, but this ability of yours, I need it, I need to understand it, and I want you to help me with that, ok?"
"Mmmwhat? y-you can't t-take parts of me, o-or anyone, it's i-impossible!"
"Ohhh, darling, you don't have any idea! I am an expert at taking things that belong to others, I have mastered it. I have devoted my life to it, and I have had a long, long life. I'm over 90, you know. I have just been taking 'parts of people' to keep myself young! Well, mostly young... But as it is, I'm still susceptible to being killed, and... Well, I've taken a lot of people over the years, so very many people want to kill me as a sort of petty revenge for 'loved ones'. You see, they don't understand the difference in value between my life and theirs.
Granted, the value of a life is a tricky thing to gauge, but the difference between mine, a prince, and theirs, usually riff raff like your friend over there, well, it's not really a contest. Now, you are a different story, I'd say your life is... quite a lot more valuable than theirs just based on your value to me alone, and isn't the value to those with value what true value is?"
He looked at me expectantly. I looked back, confused. He sighed and shook his head theatrically, obviously enjoying himself.
"That's the issue with children, they just aren't good at conversation, it's their one downside really. Well, no matter, I shall have to have a philosophical discussion on the nature of my work another day, after all, we still have quite a lot to do today!"
With that, he pulled out a pair of shears, and cut off my little finger.
I screamed so loud I thought my lungs would rupture, but he just smiled wide and picked up the severed digit. I could still feel it too, and it twitched in his fingers. Worms were squirming out of the stump on both ends, and he held it close to his face to look closer at them. I could almost see him through the worms. Not... 'see', but sense. The worms were eyeless, and while I could 'feel' his face and breath on the finger through them, I couldn't tell much more than shapes. He pulled out a notebook from below his apron, and I recognized it as the one the doctor had written in a couple weeks ago.
'so that's why he came looking... That bastard sold me out...' I thought absently.
He wrote a few lines, and turned back to me and raised his eyebrows.
"Sweetheart, you're turning blue- well, blue grey really, won't you please take a breath? Oxygen starvation testing isn't for a while, you know."
At that, I realized I was still screaming, or at least trying. The last of my air had fled my lungs a few moments ago and I was simply pushing them to produce the smallest of whispers. I gasped deeply, the life rushing back into me, and with it the pain of my severed finger. I grit my teeth and moaned with pain at the throbbing wound. The prince looked at me for a few moments and then put the finger on the table, and slid it closer and closer to my hand. As soon as the worms from each end touched, they seemed to merge together and yank. They pulled my finger back, and I shouted in pain again as it messily slammed into place. I felt the worms slide around inside, pulling the parts to the right place, and lining my finger up. I could still control them, but it almost seemed like they knew what to do already.
My breathing steadied, and I calmed down as he watched the pink line appear around the finger. It still hurt, so, so badly, but I could feel it as part of me, it felt like it belonged again. He nodded, and wrote in the doctor's notebook a bit more, then picked up the shears and walked around to my other side. Before I could process what he was doing and make a fist, he picked up my hand, and snipped off the same finger on my other hand.
I screamed again, of course, but through my teeth this time. The hissing sound it made seemed to please him even more than the screaming did as he put my twitching, squirming finger in a jar. He put the jar on the shelf, and pulled a stool out from under the shelf and sat on it, watching my stump. I clenched my fist and tried to focus on calming the pain, but the waves went through me with every heartbeat, and I choked through my tears as I lost my breath. I could feel the severed finger calling to me, in pain, the worms crawling against the glass, trying to find purchase to climb out, to get back to me.
The prince's eyes stayed locked on my hand, unmoving, and it seemed like he was barely breathing. I felt the worms in my severed finger slow down, then seem to stop moving by themselves. I could still reach out and move them myself, but the desperate struggle was over. Instead, my hand started to feel strange, slimy almost, all on the inside, and I felt something like a tube come from deep inside of my chest and slide down my arm. When it reached my finger, I felt something 'spit' out of it, 'feeding' the worms. Me and the prince watched as the worms twisted and squirmed and shaped themselves out of the hole and shaped themselves into a new finger. The material that was spit out was seemingly what was helping my wounds in the past, because in between the squirming black worms were pink streaks gluing them together.
In the end, after about 30 minutes, I had a new finger, swirled and patterned in pink and dark grey, throbbing and in pain, but still a finger. The prince stroked it lightly and I hissed at his touch, and he smiled.
"This... This is exactly what I was promised. You are far, far more valuable than you know. You rival my life with your valuableness, simply because your life will soon be equal to my own. This is wonderful to see, and I'm going to have so much fun finding out the limitations on our new ability, and how exactly to make it our ability! I would go on today, but I am so pleased, I think I will give you a treat, I will end here, and I will send down a soldier with some table scraps later for you and your friend. Eat up and eat well for now, I do plan on testing your need for food as well! Although, I shouldn't say more, I wouldn't want to spoil it!"
He unstrapped my bonds one by one, leaving the neck for last, and hoisting me up by it once he unbuckled me. He drug me past Mill, who I could now see was openly sobbing, and locked me to the wall again. He turned to go, but stroked Mill's cheek as did.
"If your friend cooperates, Sister Millicent, we won't need a repeat of last night. We won't need it, but of course, I may want it. Still, try and make her behave, won't you? For your sake."
After he purred this into her hood, making sure I could hear, he stood, and strode out, not saying another word. Thankfully, the lights did not dim this time as he left, and I could see Mill's face clearly. She was crying hard now, not trying to hide it, and her tears were dripping onto the floor as she stood with her hands awkwardly hung by her shoulders.
"I-it's ok Mill, I g-grew a new one, see?... It's pr-pretty too, look, it's o-ok!" I choked out, waving my right hand with the new finger at her.
She started crying harder, and without knowing exactly why, I started crying again too. I aways was a joiner like that, if someone laughed, I'd laugh too, if they cried, it'd set me off sooner or later. I pulled at the chains, but they were fully latched, and I couldn't get any closer to comfort her. After a few minutes, she looked up at me, her eyes red, the flush of her cheeks covering the bruising and whispered out a few words.
"'m s-sorry, 's m-my fault..."
"N-no! We couldn't have know he was at the monastery, it's not your fault! I was the one who left the building, and-"
"No! T-th' b-book, 'e found ou' abou' ye from th' b-book... Th' one th' doc made. I made ye go t' th' doc, it's my fault..."
"Oh... Well... I mean. It's ok, you were being sweet, you wanted to help me-"
"No. I was doin' it because I wanted t' go ta church wi' ye. I care about ye, but I jes' wanted t' be in th' church so bad... I thought I'd git ye fixed, an' we'd be in th' church, and ye could live there and we'd 'ave real beds, but it was all because I wanted t' go t' church. It was selfish 'o me..."
"...Well, I wanted you to be happy. I know how much church means to you, and I wanted you to be able to go back, so... I wanted to go too."
She hung there limply, unconvinced.
"It'll be ok... He said he thinks I'm valuable, so I'll be ok. He might hurt me a bit, but it'll be ok in the end! A-and I'll try and be good so... whatever happened to you last night won't happen again..."
She looked at me for a few moments and then lowered her head, without responding. I sat there, not knowing what to say. I felt like for the first time on my life, there was some kind of wedge between me and her, something I couldn't understand. I knew the prince had hurt her, I wasn't stupid, but I couldn't understand why it was changing her so much. I've seen her get slapped across the room by someone at the inn for throwing wine in his face, and she got up bloodied nosed and staggering and told him off in front of the whole place. Whatever had happened, it was something new. Was she tortured? Did he drug her? Nothing made sense, and I didn't want to think about it too hard, so I just sat there, watching her, unsure what to say.
~
After a long time, the guard showed up with a plate of leftover table scraps for me and Mill to eat, bits of meat, bread crusts, some cold stew pooling under it all. She unshackled one of our hands each and stood facing us in the doorway to the cell. We couldn't both reach the plate at the same time if it was between us because of how we were chained, so we took turns picking something and sliding the plate over to the other with our feet, and like that, we managed to split the whole plate evenly. It wasn't a feast, but it was the highest quality food I'd ever had, nothing like the unsellable vegetables from farmer Anayis, or the almost spoiled food Mill brought back from the church, or the flour gruel we made.
The guard took away the empty plate, and chained us back up. I spoke up and asked if Mill could get a stool, at which she glared at me, and the guard laughed and walked upstairs without replying. As she left, the lights did dim, and we were plunged into twilight. Mill broke her day-long silence then, saying her piece in a low tone
"Don' ask fir stuff fir me, ifn I need it, I'll ask."
"I-I was just trying to get you help, hanging like that looks painful..."
"...Ifn ye ask fir a favor, it'll have t' be paid back. I don' wan' t' be in debt ta him in any way"
"Oh... ok, well it's good the guard ignored us I guess..."
"...Does yer finger still 'urt?"
"Yeah, it's like, it's like that feeling when one of us lays on the other's arm too long while we sleep, and it the arm gets all tingly? It's kinda like that, but just on the one finger."
"Guessn that'll go away?"
"I hope so, yeah. It's already feeling better, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, I can still feel the other finger... the one that was cut off, I can still feel it and move it..."
She twisted around and squinted at the shelf, it was dark but the shapes of the bottles were still visible
"Move it then, wiggle it aroun' a bit."
I focused and made the finger flick a bit, and jerk against the glass. A small clinking noise like two glasses knocking against each other rang out in the quiet room. Mill whistled, and turned back around to face me.
"Well, don' be tellin' th' prince about that, that's real useful, and ifn 'e don' know, we kin use it t' git out, see?"
"Uh, how does me being able to wiggle a finger help us get out?"
"Well... I'm bettin' 'e won' stop at fingers, an... well, a 'ole hand could git th' keys an' get th' door open."
I think about that, and pull on the finger again, feeling the cold glass. I felt the worms inside, dormant unless I moved them myself. I feel through the worms in my body, feeling them snake and twist around under the skin, under the muscles, and I think about the way they feel in the open air, scared and weak, compared to the strong, bold feeling they give off from inside. I think about losing a whole hand, or another limb and I shudder, but I look up at Mill and smile anyway.
"Yeah, that's a good plan, I'll do that as soon as I have an extra hand! I'm sure he'll try it soon, he did say he wanted to test more stuff, right?"
Mill looked at me solemnly again, and smiled sadly
"Yeah, jes think of it as gittin' parts fer our escape, right?"
"Yeah, just... getting parts, that's what it is."