Vile Jelly

Shivers' face was near healed. Faint pink stripe left across his forehead, through his brow, across his cheek. More'n likely it would fade altogether in a few days more. His eye still ached a bit, but he'd kept his looks alright. Monza lay in the bed, sheet round her waist, skinny back turned towards him. He stood a moment, grinning, watching her ribs shift gently as she breathed, patches of shadow between them shrinking and growing. Then he padded from the mirror across to the open window, looking out. Beyond it the city was burning, fires lighting up the night. Strange thing though, he wasn't sure which city, or why he was there. Mind was moving slowly. He winced, rubbing at his cheek.

“Hurts,” he grunted. “By the dead it hurts.”

“Oh, that hurts?” He whipped round, stumbling back against the wall. Fenris the Feared loomed over him, bald head brushing the ceiling, half his body tattooed with tiny letters, the rest all cased in black metal, face writhing like boiling porridge.

“You're … you're fucking dead!”

The giant laughed. “I'll say I'm fucking dead.” He had a sword stuck right through his body, the hilt above one hip, point of the blade sticking out under his other arm. He jerked one massive thumb at the blood dripping from the pommel and scattering across the carpet. “I mean, this really hurts. Did you cut your hair? I liked you better before.”

Bethod pointed to his smashed-in head, a twisted mess of blood, brains, hair, bone. “Shuth uth, the pair o' youth.” He couldn't speak right because his mouth was all squashed in on itself. “Thith ith whath hurts lookth like!” He gave the Feared a pointless shove. “Why couldn't you win, you thtupid half-devil bathtard?”

“I'm dreaming,” Shivers said to himself, trying to think his way through it, but his face was throbbing, throbbing. “I must be dreaming.”

Someone was singing. “I … am made … of death!” Hammer banging on a nail. “I am the Great Leveller!” Bang, bang, bang, each time sending a jolt of pain through Shivers' face. “I am the storm in the High Places!” The Bloody-Nine hummed to himself as he cut the corpse of Shivers' brother into bits, stripped to the waist, body a mass of scars and twisted muscle all daubed-up with blood. “So you're the good man, eh?” He waved his knife at Shivers, grinning. “You need to fucking toughen up, boy. You should've killed me. Now help me get his arms off, optimist.”

“The dead know I don't like this bastard any, but he's got a point.” Shivers' brother's head peered down at him from its place nailed to Bethod's standard. “You need to toughen up. Mercy and cowardice are the same. You reckon you could get this nail out?”

“You're a fucking embarrassment!” His father, slack face streaked with tears, waving his jug around. “Why couldn't you be the one dead, and your brother lived? You useless little fuck! You useless, gutless, disappointing speck o' shit!”

“This is rubbish,” snarled Shivers through gritted teeth, sitting down on his crossed legs by the fire. His whole head was pulsing. “This is just … just rubbish!”

“What's rubbish?” gurgled Tul Duru, blood leaking from his cut throat as he spoke.

“All this. Faces from the past, saying meaningful stuff. Bit fucking obvious, ain't it? Couldn't you do better'n this shit?”

“Uh,” said Grim.

Black Dow looked a bit put out. “Don't blame us, boy. Your dream, no? You cut your hair?”

Dogman shrugged. “If you was cleverer, maybe you'd have cleverer dreams.”

He felt himself grabbed from behind, face twisted round. The Bloody-Nine was there beside him, hair plastered to his head with blood, scarred face all dashed with black. “If you was cleverer, maybe you wouldn't have got your eye burned out.” And he ground his thumb into Shivers' eye, harder and harder. Shivers thrashed, and twisted, and screamed, but there was no way free. It was already done.

He woke up screaming, 'course. He always did now. You could hardly call it a scream anymore, his voice was worn down to a grinding stub, gravel in his raw throat.

It was dark. Pain tore at his face like a wolf at a carcass. He thrashed free of the blankets, reeled to nowhere. Like the iron was still pressed against him, burning. He crashed into a wall, fell on his knees. Bent over, hands squeezing the sides of his skull like they might stop his head from cracking open. Rocking, every muscle flexed to bursting. He groaned and moaned, whimpered and snarled, spat and blubbered, drooled and gibbered, mad from it, mindless with it. Touch it, press it. He held his quivering fingers to the bandages.

“Shhhh.” He felt a hand. Monza, pawing at his face, pushing back his hair.

Pain split his head where his eye used to be like an axe splitting a log, split his mind too, broke it open, thoughts all spilling out in a mad splatter. “By the dead … make it stop … shit, shit.” He grabbed her hand and she winced, gasped. He didn't care. “Kill me! Kill me. Just make it stop.” He wasn't even sure what tongue he was talking. “Kill me. By the …” He was sobbing, tears stinging the eye he still had. She tore her hand away and he was rocking again, rocking, pain ripping through his face like a saw through a tree-stump. He'd tried to be a good man, hadn't he?

“I tried, I fucking tried. Make it stop … please, please, please, please—”

“Here.” He snatched hold of the pipe and sucked at it, greedy as a drunkard at the bottle. He hardly even marked the smoke biting, just heaved in air until his lungs were full, and all the while she held him, arms tight around him, rocking him back and forwards. The darkness was full of colours, now. Covered with glittering smears. The pain was a step away, 'stead of pressed burning against him. His breathing had softened to a whimper, aching body all washed out.

She helped him up, dragging him to his feet, pipe clattering from his limp hand. The open window swayed, a painting of another world. Hell maybe, red and yellow spots of fire leaving long brushstrokes through the dark. The bed came up and swallowed him, sucked him down. His face throbbed still, pulsed a dull ache. He remembered, remembered why.

“The dead …” he whispered, tears running down his other cheek. “My eye. They burned my eye out.”

“Shhhh,” she whispered, gently stroking the good side of his face. “Quiet now, Caul. Quiet.”

The darkness was reaching for him, wrapping him up. Before it took him he twisted his fingers clumsily in her hair and dragged her face towards his, close enough almost to kiss his bandages.

“Should've been you,” he whispered at her. “Should've been you.”