The Golden Cut

by Merl Fluin

  TJ: Directrix, I’m not saying I’m going to do what she says with the Mouth of Hypatia. I just want to hear it.

  IRRIE: Thank you, TJ. I’m winging it, but if we divide the Mouth of Hypatia with the Golden Cut we should be able to both multiply and disperse its power. It’s a question of intersecting a three-dimensional cavity with a two-dimensional plane. I would have thought you and your gang would be into that.

  DIRECTRIX: It’s not an empty cavity. It’s a living organ.

  IRRIE: With an interestingly cavernous morphology.

  DIRECTRIX: More of a mobile fold than a cavern.

  IRRIE: Which sounds like a very apt description of space-time itself. The Star gang have instruments you can use to measure that, don’t you? Astrolabes and such.

  TJ: But we still don’t know what this power that we’re going to multiply and disperse actually is. What does the Mouth of Hypatia do?

  (IRRIE AND TJ BOTH STARE AT THE DIRECTRIX. IT STARES BACK. A LONG SILENCE.)

  DIRECTRIX: The Mouth speaks. After 2,000 years, if we regain the Mouth, we will hear Hypatia’s own voice.

  TJ: Ow! Do I have to tell you again?

  She scowled down at the homunculus, which had swallowed her hand beyond the wrist and was now attacking her forearm. Its lips rippled like twin slugs.

  “That looks like the start of something,” said Irrie Corrie warily.

  The Directrix’s hands fluttered and its eyebrows clacked up and down. “Can’t you stop it?”

  “No, shit, I can’t stop it. I’m asleep, remember? I can’t control sleeping dreams, I need Cowhead for that.” The homunculus nibbled at her elbow.

  “Well, gals, this seems to be the moment to say our goodbyes,” said Irrie hastily. “TJ, I don’t know where you’ll end up if that little critter swallows you whole, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be there with you.”

  TJ went white. Perspiration rolled down her head and chest and pooled on the homunculus’s belly, which undulated with excited movements. She shook her arm, but the creature was clamped to her flesh and already approaching her shoulder. Its head and body grew in size as the length of her arm diminished.

  She cursed, struggled and cried. Smears of blood appeared around the creature’s lips.

  The Directrix turned to Irrie Corrie: “She can’t leave us here. She can’t leave me here! How do I get out of this nowhere?”

  TJ’s hair tangled between the homunculus’s newly sprouted teeth. Their needle-sharp points pierced her neck and breast. The inside of its mouth was dry and fibrous. The rows of teeth were embedded in wads of pulp between palate rinds. It stank of seed.

  The last thing she heard before her head was entirely swallowed was the Directrix screeching:

  “Wake up! Come back! You need me!”

  32.

  “I hate you both,” said Cowhead.

  “I’ll take over,” said TJ, bustling Cowhead out of the way. “You go and rest for a while.”

  When Cowhead had gone, the Directrix said, “She should have stayed. It will hatch soon.”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly why she should go. I don’t want her freaking out.”

  “This girl is a coward.”

  “That’s unfair,” said TJ, but she said no more.

  They were in a cul-de-sac at the end of one of the fungal tunnels. An alcove gouged the wall, large enough to accommodate a seated human. At the bottom of the alcove nestled a white egg. The egg was so big that it reached to TJ’s lower thigh.

  TJ picked up the cloak and hat from where Cowhead had dropped them, straddled the egg, wrapped it in the folds of the cloak, and settled down to incubate.

  “This is actually pretty boring,” she said.

  The Directrix clacked its teeth in reply.

  Time passed, or perhaps did not. Scraping and ticking came from the egg.

  “Whoa, now what?”

  “Grimoire,” said the Directrix, handing her a book. “Don’t get off too soon.”

  TJ sat on the egg with the book on her lap. Her face was as pale and expectant as the egg itself. The cloak hung around her in columns of red, green and blue; the dome-shaped red and yellow hat balanced on her head. The sound continued intermittently, then increased in intensity. Longer bursts of effort caused the eggshell to buzz between her legs.

  “Want to get out, huh?” she said, shifting from buttock to buttock. “Join the club, kiddo.”

  She yelped and jumped away when the egg cracked beneath her. Side by side with the Directrix she watched as a second crack shot from the tip of the egg to the base. The shell became semi-transparent and veined with gold. Not one but many shadowy beings writhed inside, pushing smudgy limbs against the membrane.

  The egg plopped open. Its insides glistened like cold meat jelly. Squirming in the goo lay ten or fifteen dark human shapes. Each had five protrusions off a central body: head, arms, legs, impossible to see which was which. They flipped and slithered about.

  “Shit shit shit, what do we do?” TJ’s feet danced away from the muscular little creatures.

  “This is surprising,” said the Directrix.

  “Didn’t you know what was going to happen?”

  “I suggest you catch them,” said the Directrix as the leech-like things flapped in all directions, “they’re getting away.”

  TJ knelt in the slime. Her hands flailed as the creatures squirmed out of her grasp, and she slipped and sprawled and landed in the egg-jelly. Her torso paled and became translucent, her veins and blood vessels showing in gold filigree, her heart a pulsing golden orb. The creatures changed too, sprouting insect-like limbs and long flowing goldfish tails. They burrowed in and out of the fungal floor, made holes in TJ’s abdomen, scuttled back and forth. TJ shrieked and grabbed at them, pulling them out of her body and flinging them away while the Directrix screamed:

  “Catch them, catch them, don’t throw them!”

  Cowhead ran into the room, snatched up the hat that had fallen from TJ’s head and slammed it down over the puddle of slime. Then she grabbed TJ by both hands and yanked her out of the alcove. Creatures dived beneath the surfaces of the walls and floor and disappeared.

  “Let’s not do that again,” said TJ. She and the Directrix both looked at the bedraggled hat and sighed.

  TJ went out into the tunnels and returned with an empty jar. She removed the lid, took a breath, lifted the hat with one hand, and slammed down the upturned jar with the other. Trapped inside the glass, a strip of flesh jerked like a disembodied tongue.

  “One,” said the Directrix.

  “Do we need to worry about the ones that got away?”

  “We need to worry about everything.”

  The creature started to work its head into the floor with swivelling motions. TJ turned the jar upright and put the lid on top with the creature inside. She scooped some of the egg-jelly into her hand and slopped that into the jar too. The creature reared up on its sinewy tail and waved its head. “Now what?”

  “Hide it.”

  “Will it grow or mutate or what?”

  “Whatever it does, we’ll make the best of it.”

  TJ peered at the glistening jelly. An undulating column of brown-yellow phlegm detached and reattached itself to and from the glass with the twitching creature at its centre. The creature’s five extremities kept shifting and reforming into heads, limbs, tails and orifices.

  “Is it getting bigger or smaller?”

  “Bigger in general, I think. But it’s hard to keep track of the process because of the time fluctuations down here.”

  “So the ones that got away, they’re down here somewhere and getting bigger too?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Yuk.”

  The creature convulsed and doubled in size. One of its limbs took on the shape of a quasi-human head with a wide yawn of a mouth. Its swollen arms and legs writhed against the inside of the jar. Two more of the creatures, larger but less well developed, plopped into view behind Cowhead. They lunged above and below
the spongy floor like playful fish. TJ watched them somersault in their own slime. Her lip curled, but her eyes followed their every movement. One of them flopped flipper-like limbs to either side and hauled itself along as it learned to walk. Its two rear limbs scrabbled for purchase and pushed the body along from behind. TJ reached out with an index finger, then recoiled from its tobacco-spit skin. She sniffed her finger and made a face.

  The jar popped.

  “What was that?” asked Cowhead.

  The creature’s wet flesh now completely filled the jar. Its mushy face was hunched between fidgeting body parts. Viscous gold oozed from a spiral crack that ran around the glass.

  “Oho, so that’s your game,” said TJ.

  The creature’s one visible eye rolled. Its lips flapped. The jar shattered. A smelly cascade of glass beached the gasping creature. It was a flabby toad transmuted into a naked man with bulging eyes. Its gash of a mouth opened to reveal a writhing stump of tongue root with no palate. TJ watched as it fumbled to sit on its haunches, propping itself upright on the knuckles of oversized hands.

  More of the creatures slobbered at her feet. One of them threw itself across TJ’s boot. “Jesus, get off me!”

  It obeyed, wriggling away from her.

  “Interesting. Get back on my boot.” It did so. “Very interesting.”

  She turned her attention to the thing that had emerged from the jar. “Stand up.” It lurched to its feet and stood, swaying but upright. “Turn around.” It turned and presented her with two pimple-shaped buttocks. “It’s doing what I tell it! Cowhead, you try.”

  Cowhead gave it instructions to lie down, get up, bend over and roll about on its back. TJ clapped her hands and described what it was doing for blind Cowhead’s benefit until they both laughed at its cavorting. Cowhead issued her final command: “Speak.”

  The creature opened and closed its mouth in silence. An expression of anguish contorted its stupid face.

  ***

  Cowhead slept. TJ felt Cowhead’s flanks warm between her thighs. She traced the pathways of veins across Cowhead’s velvety skin, the mane of hair swirled behind Cowhead’s neck against the bunk. Cowhead did not wake.

  TJ’s bare feet landed in a pool of sticky liquids and aborted homunculi. She crouched to pull the box from beneath her bunk and lifted the lid. The fully formed homunculus nestled in a foetal position in a wet mess of shattered glass. Its mouth gaped as it breathed.

  She extricated it from the glass and placed it on the empty bunk, glancing back at Cowhead. Then she lay down beside the homunculus, placed one of its little hands inside her mouth, closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  She saw everything as if through a fisheye lens in a carny tent. There was Cowhead, asleep on the bunk, her elongated face shiny with distortion, her blankets slopping around her torso and onto the floor. Animalcules like silverfish writhed through the dirt and hairballs under Cowhead’s bunk. The hacienda’s phosphorescence, usually so eerie, was soothing now. TJ could barely hear Cowhead’s slow breaths behind a louder foreground noise, a swishing and gurgling that filled her head and sluiced around her body.

  A lurch raised her above the level of the bunks. A pair of legs glistened below her. Two feet shone far away on the floor. An immense hand approached her from on high and covered the lens. TJ could see whorls on the flesh of its palm as it rubbed back and forth. The homunculus was caressing its own pregnant belly.

  Time rolled in lazy loops. Sometimes TJ saw the broken glass of the homunculus jar beneath the bunk. Sometimes the jar was intact and she saw tiny black creatures still wriggling inside it. Sometimes there was nothing there at all, just empty floor or even a bare patch of earth. Sometimes she saw herself stroking Cowhead’s face, whispering and wheedling. Other times Cowhead sat alone on the bunk and stared at the wall with empty eyes.

  The homunculus often roamed the tunnels and corridors, bumping its head against the ruffs and knobbles that protruded from walls and ceilings. Smaller creatures were scattered through the fabric of the hacienda, and whenever they came close enough the homunculus reached out a hand or foot, absorbing them into its own flesh with a soft plop. Then TJ would receive impressions from other parts of Alexandria. The liquorice smell of Cantos’s black cigarettes, the glint of gold beneath his robe, the curl of his hair. Little Dove and False Uncle rummaging through a wardrobe, tossing clothes and books behind them. A gun being cleaned and oiled. Ink spilling onto the floor. TJ would close her eyes and roll over, slow and easy. Of Irrie Corrie and the Directrix there was no sign.

  33.

  She swirled in darkness. The fisheye was blank. A cradle of fluid rocked her, warm and clammy. All at sea she revolved, a compass without a needle.

  Rockabye baby on a toadstool. When the wind breaks you’ll enter a Fool.

  A squeeze. Muscular flesh snapped around her, then ebbed and rippled. Her body span.

  The lens dawned rosy. She peered out and saw a room of books, desks and reading lamps. Her progress through the bookstacks was slow and unsteady. She saw the feet and legs of the homunculus, sometimes beneath her, sometimes above or to the sides. She pushed her hands against the inside of the homunculus and kicked with her legs to keep the lens in front of her face, but it slid uncontrollably. Glimpses of an arm, a raised knee, a fist. The creature’s face loomed into view. Its eyes and forehead were creased, its mouth agape. It pulled away again and she was thrown wild by another squeeze.

  Carpet flowed beneath her. Knees and hands moved in and out of her field of vision with a jerking rhythm. The movement stopped and TJ stared down at the carpet: an intricate pattern of fern-like spirals interlaced with geometrical designs. Sound of the homunculus’s agonised panting. The carpet swung away in a blur of book spines and lights until her gaze rested on the mushroom ceiling.

  The contractions came faster now and violent. The ceiling took on a new texture, woven flesh streaked with pigment. The pigment blended with the air and hung in miasmic clouds. She tried to close her eyes, but could not: her eyeball was pressed so hard against the lens that there was no space for the eyelid. She screamed with her mouth closed as the fisheye burst. A final contraction shoved her up and out.

  The world had no depth; it was all extension. Nothing ever happened.

  A speck of pigment grew larger and swelled into an oval. The speck of pigment was her. She was being born from two dimensions into three, face first, body flailing to keep up from behind, or was it below, or was it nowhere? A mandala of hair and tendons. Some think, O King Hiero, that the grains of sand cannot be counted. She erupted like a stain and spread like bacteria. Her two dimensions were trapped inside a third, until Cantos Can opened the pages of the book in which he had kept her pressed. She stepped out to meet him.

  They stood face-to-face inside the vitrine. Sticky fibres still clung to her spine. The pages that had been her body rustled as she breathed. Cantos looked down at his hands: they were covered in tiny cuts, and bleeding. She held out arms entwined with tendrils of illumination, gold and azure scrolling between her fingers. Cantos had two thighs of blood and bone. A gun was in his left hand and his body was in perfect balance. It was TJ whose left hand had the extra finger. Dice and knife blades tumbled around her hips. He leaned towards her ear and murmured. “I’m coming after you, now, smart-arse,” she said. She plucked the eye from the back of her thumb and pushed it into his empty palm. He gazed at her without speaking. She cupped his hand in both of hers and pushed it towards his face. At the last moment he struggled and gagged, but she forced the eyeball into his mouth. She clamped both hands over his face and pinched his nostrils until he swallowed. He crashed backwards through the glass of the cabinet and hit the ground with TJ’s full weight on top of him. Both of them were breathing hard. His hot thighs writhed against hers.

  The gun fell from his hand. She picked it up as she rose to her knees. She held it against his forehead for a few seconds. Then she pulled it back, kissed the muzzle and tucked it inside her belt before walki
ng away.

  It was night in the courtyard of the hacienda. Five homunculi waited for her by the dry fountain. Their arms hung loose and their faces were slack. There was no moon; stars swarmed above their heads.

  Dimensions and directions were indiscernible in the thick texture of the night. She could see nothing, but she heard the desert beyond Alexandria’s invisible perimeter: the calls of birds, the howls of coyotes, the patter of dung beetles.

  She walked forwards with her arms stretched out like a somnambulist. She stumbled over rocks and ornaments until her hands touched a smooth wall. Tracing plaster cracks and bullet holes with her fingers, she followed the wall around, the homunculi trailing behind her.

  The wall stopped and she clutched at wild cold empty desert air. She moved forwards, stopped, moved again. She was at an open gate. She was running, headlong, her breath in tatters. Spores of stars above, spores of sand below, nothing but space and time between, TJ screaming through it all to freedom. Unseen plants and minerals ripped at her clothes and face, but she kept running, her legs numb, her ribcage on fire.