by James Dorr
And so I was outcast, for seven long years, not eating her body—for that is proscribed too, that which is killed wrongfully cannot be eaten—but carrying it with me on my back while the flesh rotted off it, liquefying itself on my shoulders, dribbling down my spine, running in rivulets with my own sweat to collect in pools at my feet. Until, thus purged, I came back to the Old City, that portion of it to east of the river—which once was the city before the New City rose up to the north of it, ever encroaching—sun-bleached sinew and bone still hung from my back, clang, clang, clanging as I passed wearily amongst my old fellows, once again one with them.
So I returned home, now seeking a place to live. Spotting among the ruins east of the river what once had been a building of stature, crowned with a gilded, metal dome, but now, under the storms’ lashing, having first one, then another floor crumble and crack beneath its weight, now was Dome alone.
Under the Dome, still supported by rubble above the ground’s level, were rooms of a basement, with twisted passages. Maze-like, entrancing, a home to rats only—this the only sector, after all, where rats weren’t eaten—until I made it my own, setting my burden down.
Then, staring into the blanks of its skull-eyes, I contemplated it.
• • •
So it was then that I dreamed a vision. These were years, you see, when bodies enough came to us in our ghoul-ways, imported from the New City’s impoverished, these the New-Cityers unable even to pay the most meager fare for corpse-passage across the great river to enter the Tombs—to beg even a pauper’s plot—who, thus, made of us a cult of sorts. One of Death. One of protection, to get on our “good sides” as it were for when their own time would come to them, that perhaps their leavings be buried near those past. Or rather be used—the skin, the bones, fingernails, all parts inedible—these, I say, be used in some construction, some built or repaired thing, near to those they once loved.
It was all the same to us.
Except my vision, I would do this thing for them, but not the poor ones. Rather the wealthy ones, those rich and powerful. Those in life renowned for their grace and beauty—and often their cruelty as, in the New City, rarely would one exist without the other—one must, after all, have some way of obtaining wealth from which comes beauty, the paints and cosmetics, the fine clothes and jewelry which all are attracted to—and hence within their flesh, long after rot and crumbling should take it, that which we did not take, the most fascinating of souls that one might obtain.
And, in my vision, I would demonstrate these souls, showing them in my art.
• • •
“Ah,” you say, facing me, gazing upon me, “how can you proclaim these things? How can you speak thus?”
And so I answer you, not in words but in deeds: Let your eyes guide you here. Let your thoughts. Let your own souls be the receptors of what stands around you beneath our Old City ruins, having yourselves sought me amidst cragged ruin-alleys, so much in their own way reflections of those marbled passages others seek across the river, the catacombs of the Tombs. Thus my brass-coated Dome, squat on its own hillock, in its own way a mockery of the great hill-topping Pyramid that dominates the land inside the Tombs’ walls. Its plazas and obelisks—here on the east side we have our own plaza, just over the tributary stream that separates us from the New City suburbs, where poor leave their dead and—more and more as this new Cult of Death prospers—sometimes the rich also.
Those rich, perhaps, who were too powerful too soon. Who made too many enemies. Or sometimes women who, not just with beauty, but also with wealth controlled under their own hands, sought thus to dominate men who might love them—some almost themselves legends, such as one Chandra who centuries ago sought the Tombs to escape our grasp, having her corpse shipped across the North Causeway, as far from us as it might, falling on ghoul-ways in the end after all, but, in so doing, adding more to her fame.
This Chandra I would have had, had I lived then. And others before her—an Emperor’s daughter—and others before her, had I then been living. These women of legend.
And yet I have women too, these rich and powerful who people my gallery, and who of us is not dead? At least some part of us. A flaking off of skin. Some ulcer inside us, perhaps, some small piece of rot? And souls, too, speak to souls.
Thus look around you, you who would understand. See as I saw once the laughing ghoul-children, coursing amidst our ruins, new paths with every storm, for are we ghouls not the most, of all creatures, vulnerable to the vagaries of nature, notwithstanding the horn-hardness of our skins? That small protection evolving has given us, thus compensating for steel and stone as the New City dwellers use to build their towers, thickening their roofs against an ever-bloating sun, or marbled sepulchers as lie beneath the Tombs, stiffened with gravestones and cenotaphs up above?
And yet we have children—a spewing of progeny, we the most prolific of creatures too, saving, perhaps, the rats. And ghoul-wives also we have, as I soon found.
• • •
Thus it was I saw her, a ghoul-female named Madras cavorting in the ruins near to my Dome home, young and lithe-bodied with legs as tanned as my river-tormentress’s had been a pale death-white; with flesh hard and twisted as hers—she whose bones lay new-heaped in the basements beneath my Dome—had once been soft and smooth-muscled. With breasts as domes themselves, straining against the rough fabric that cushioned them. With jewels—small rat-skulls strung necklace-like over the curve of her ghoul-belly—bouncing as she, with her deep eyes, winked at me. Seeing me gaping thus.
Seeing me thus drinking in her beauty, a new kind of beauty, one hardened by life’s strain, one nourished by not fish, as boat-people feast on, nor rats as New-Cityers, but good, honest flesh of death, such as we ghouls devour. And so I was in love.
So, as I soon found out, was also Madras in love with me, she who had spied me from afar from the first night I had come here, my burden clang-clanging still against my shoulders, and claimed the Dome as my own.
Setting my burden down.
Now free to do—to do as I might wish to do.
And so, discovering each other’s love, we lay that night naked under the moon’s light, her legs parting for me, her flesh yielding to my touch. Hard nipples stiffening under my ghoul-tongue’s moist, circling caresses.
Later that same night her ghoul-lips pressed onto mine, murmuring as tongues touched.
And that morning moving with me to my dome-boudoir, echoing once more our actions beneath the moon, vying with body-heat even the sun with its scorching now-risen rays, near-melting both from within and without the brass-sculpted, ribbed dome-surface that arched above us.
Thus my new life began, one crowned in ecstasy as I and Madras flitted through ruin-tunnels, hand-in-hand dashing among stone and brick husks, kissing in passageways. Lying in love within darkened arches, above the shattered streets.
Rutting with rat-kind, prolific as they should we have our own ghoul-child, but for now just glorying in flesh receiving flesh. Arms entwined, climbing up even our own Dome to gaze westward over the river, to drink the Tombs’ green glow reflected on water, its angel-topped Pyramid silhouetted against the moon’s setting as we, no lovers of poisoned day either, enjoyed one last coupling, then scurried ourselves down to shelter and safety. To make love again before sleeping till next night.
And spring became summer, summer fall, fall winter, during that year’s turning. Punctuated by raids on the Tombs itself—we were bold, she and I—often with others, but, sometimes, the two of us. Sometimes attempting even the guarded graves, taking the blows of the warders’ iron-bound staffs as we laughed together. Then, even if empty handed that night, spent the next day beneath our Dome nursing our bodies, exploring their wounded parts.
And other parts as well.
Other times simply accepting death-offerings from the New City suburbs, those too poor for burial, picnicking on their flesh. Drinking corpse-brandy as, belching, we pulled meat-strings out of each other’s t
eeth. Once again lips pressing. Once again body parts as we compared those which we had just eaten with those which we owned—a breast filet with a breast, a thigh half-rotted with one thumping with desire—that between thighs pulsing as, once again, we left off our eating the flesh of others for our own flesh’s joining, Madras’s to Mangol’s. Mangol to Madras.
And we would have children, should our fates permit it.
Until, one November night—always November, that month of the fiercest storms—separated on one of our tomb-raids, surrounded by others, whistling, corpse-lust rising within us all, blue ghoul-lights swinging as we battled tomb-guards who, that night, bested us. As I say, separated in retreat, Madras was trampled.
• • •
They brought her corpse to me, those with her recovering it, knowing that she was mine and so not eating it, but, rather, bringing it to me in my Dome for my own feasting. My own ritual freeing of she who I had loved.
And so left me, weeping.
For it is the process that we ghouls devour: not dead flesh for its own sake. Rather we eat the rot, the corruption, that which as it is so stripped away thus releases the spirit that lives within it into the sky above. And I would not eat in that way my Madras.
Rather I would hold her soul in my dome-shelter, loving it still as I had loved it, it and the flesh as well, all that past year’s turning under my brass, curved roof.
As I kept, also, that of she who mocked me—that which had been punishment, so long ago, for having once yielded.
And killed what I yielded to.
And, thus, a new love had come to fill my soul. A love of Death itself, which, through my flesh-loves, I would now memorialize in the brick-arched chambers beneath my Dome. Madras and she who had once plied the river, whose name I had never known; Madras whose brown flesh had joined mine so many nights, that other one’s who had once been a boat-princess that, pale as a poisoned moon had sucked me into it. I, only afterwards, striking her then with fists and sharp talons instead of fleeing in shame as I should have—and thus to forget her—instead I had carried that death on my shoulders in hopes to atone it. Had laid that one’s bones all a-heap on my cellar floor.
Where they still lay now.
And so I carried my Madras down there as well, and found a couch to sit both corpses on, that which was still fleshed and that which was all white bone, arms twined in arms as if they were sisters. As, in a sense, both having carnally loved me—the one I had loved back, the other I hated—so it was that they were.
The next night I searched the ruins and found a cauldron which I set within my Dome. More nights I spent seeking wood beams for firewood, finding them sticking beneath twisted metal within the remains of what once had been houses. Back when the world was new and people lived by day. The metal I took too.
And daytimes beneath my Dome, sheltered from the sun, I made a new sun of fire and metal, melted to redness within my cauldron, thus carrying it downstairs to my cellar rooms, pouring it over both couch and contents—not quickly nor all at once, for do remember I had been an artist, though only of small toys—but carefully sculpting it, letting it seek its way. Letting it drip into eye-hole or ribcage, the one gaunt and all bone, the other still firm-fleshed though rot, too, was taking it. But now arresting the passage of decay, freezing the souls’ will, thus, as it sought one last time to make flesh obey—moving it, flexing it.
Twisting and grimacing.
Thus to stay always as metal cooled jewel-hard, its own self revealing.
• • •
Thus started my gallery. Thus the new life I chose, that of a sculptor, a carver, preserver, of souls that were once aware. Thus the one soul, its mocking eye still raised, still deep-set and arch-browed as if yet inspecting the swell of my ghoul-groin; the other’s downcast, demure, yet with lips smiling in knowledge of deeper love. With fragments of flesh-lumps still sticking to its dark frame, showing that first one those parts I had caressed back, she of my own kind, thus molded to my own hand—yet, as I say, the two arm-locked as sisters.
And, as the seasons passed, more souls joined them, some seated, some standing. All on their own pedestals, posed as life suited them. Many from New City, some of the first the poor. Those offered to us. Some with stories attached to their lives which, my ghoul-comrades having discovered this new art I practiced now, finding these legends out, they would bring to me.
Nor all of these female. One was a rich man who, tormented in life through failure to gain respect, so squatted in my home clown-like, belled-and-capped, glowering still the hate that, in the first place, had bought him aspersion.
Another a couple, two men who went to the Tombs to arrange that in death they might lie side by side, just as in life they had. Yet on the bridge on their final journey—the one having died, the other took his own life—their tumbrel was waylaid by ghoul-companions who cut off their corpse train, despoiling its contents. And so brought them to me where, within my gallery, they lie as they wished, liquid metal having seared flesh to flesh, that which was left of it, half-dissolving one into the other so never again might their twin forms be parted.
And women, ah, women—my art mostly women. Theirs are the souls that are most interesting, are they not? Some, demure outside, but with metal’s scalding that within revealed in truth. Lusts that put even my river-hate’s to shame.
Others, perversities.
Yet, some, true love as well. Women for men, sometimes—here in this corner, a pair, longing, hand in hand. Young bodies straining, but, other than hand-by-hand never quite touching, just as in life their positions kept them apart. In that one two young girls—scarcely more than girls—yet with a passion the one for the other that adults might envy, here displayed half-melted, puddled on steel sheets.
These, people would come to see. Word got out. Gossip. Many from New City, sometimes because they believed those they once knew might be in my gallery. Some of these come to mock—others in wistfulness. Others, yet, to offer soul-donations—to bring corpses to me—these mainly of enemies and, in some instances, not yet quite in their deaths.
These I, of course, refused—one must have integrity. I sculpted Death, not life. Though I would offer, on some occasions, knives, so that the bringers …
All with integrity, blushingly turning myself so I would not see how death might come to one—only the beauty, the form of soul still inside, of what remained after. Which I, as a sculptor of souls, would thus bring almost to the surface, and so lock forever for all to see with me.
And so I grew into fame, ghouls and New-Cityers assembling both side by side when I announced new wings, new displays opened within the catacombs beneath my dome-museum. New subjects—some in groups.
Some lost in self-love.
Some I would lie with myself when they came to me, ghoul-lust within cold flesh, often half lost to rot, those I could see would have longed for such in their lives. Though these were not many. These I would then display legs still bent, thighs spread, and some of my visitors prized these ones most of all.
As outside the storms increased, autumn to autumn—those in the summers too—lashing Old City’s streets, its jumble-stoned plazas and ruin-strewn alleys in acid-rained fury. As visitors came to see—more as my fame spread. Some, even, boat-gypsies, these who were not welcome, yet chadored and day-masked even in darkness, as some of my New City visitors also who through their positions chose not to be recognized by those who knew them, so who could tell who from whom? These, I suspect, liked the splay-legged ones most of all.
As, outside, new storms raged.
• • •
The world runs in cycles, some say, always worsening on average to be sure, but, just as some years bring storms, others are marked by calm. So, too, are centuries, some stormy, some not so much. Legends tell of great storms, one in particular, well more than a millennium past, perhaps, that decimated the Old City’s ghoul-kind. That flooded their cellars and crumbled their ruined towers, and yet our kind sprang back.
Always prolific. And yet, for it all, the Earth grew ever older.
The sun more tempestuous, nearer or more swollen, who could tell which for sure, yet days grew more heat-filled. Even nights more at risk from rain and tempests.
And who of us is not dead, at least some part of us? Possibly more so, now, as the centuries continue their mad spin past—who of us lacks at least an expectation?
A communication.
And so it was now that a latter-year storm came, one of these new storms that plague our Novembers. An advent of winter’s slight respite from scorching heat. And, as that legend-storm, this did the same and more.
Five full nights thus it raged, keeping all in their homes. Not so bad those first nights that I could not myself view it in safety from my dome-home’s entrance, but soon enough, as that last, flooding out tunnels, Old City’s low places. Forcing some to the streets without protection, its caustic rains burning skin. Wind whipping clothing from faces and bare limbs.
And, as the nights progressed, so this storm worsened. The Tombs, ah the Tombs, on its west-river hillsides, the tomb-lands were safe enough—those dead could still rest, and those who cared for them. But even the New City—I saw this from my door, just before scurrying inside beneath my Dome, seeking its center, the chamber below it to watch with my sculptures, just as the Tombs’ keepers share their crypts with their dead—even in New City lightning played on its spires, cracking its tower-tops with blue-sparked destruction. At least its highest towers.
Blue as our own ghoul-lights.
As I crouched, waiting, when one bolt glanced off a tower, arcing downward—I saw it even within my Dome’s thick walls!—striking my dome-ceiling, lighting it all with blue.
Electrifying it.
Punching a vast hole into its brass-bound side, melting its coat in a shower of metal ….
• • •
Shattering onto me!
• • •
As I stand, arms raised, here beneath my Dome’s floor, skylighted overhead where it, too, melted. Speaking to you, soul to soul, as you gape at me—for you are dead as well, in expectation. Even as, now, you live. May think yourself alive.
