TRANSDERMAL 7.03 (Patreon)

So when I said that I'd be writing three stories at once, apparently, I meant it. Lo and behold:

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DYING TOWN OR READY FOR A RESURGENCE?

While it’s easy to call it quits on something, the people of Hollow Springs have never been quitters. In the dark, in the woods, in the catastrophes, this town has weathered and held itself firm, holding tightly to each other and to the people we rely on to create a bulwark against that collapse. From bake-sales to hunting expeditions to volunteer community hours, the town of Hollow Springs is a survivor, one that has brought up multiple generations of individuals that can and should be admired and respected. 

We’ve seen that town take wounds. We’ve seen the businesses close, the schoolyard go quieter, the roads gain fresh potholes every day. But my question is this– is that enough? Is that enough to throw in the towel and stop the fight? And frankly, can we even call it a fight? We have endured time and time again through one true and certain tactic: caring about each other. Supporting each other. We go to church together, and we go to work together, and we build things together, and that hasn’t changed just because things have gotten quieter. I say there’s absolutely a possibility that things might go to rest, and the town might go its natural way, but here we stand, still alive, and imbued with the god-given privilege of being able to change things. There are many businesses that still succeed, woods fresh with game, and roads we can use to invite the world in just as much as it might try to bleed us out. So take heed, Hollow Springs! This reporter has faith in our communities, in our home, to weather even the hardest storms, so long as we all decide to put up an umbrella, and stand alongside each other.

-The Hollow Springs Gazette, 1998, page 3, by Gene Springer

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He trusts me. Jay trusts me. We’re friends. I gave him an out, the only condition being that he wouldn’t be able to help quite as much, and he decided to commit to it anyways. That’s the sort of generosity and incredible fucking wonderfulness that’s worth more than gold, because he trusts me and he wants to help. 

So I can’t fuck this up. 

No matter what happens, I cannot fuck this up. 

It’s not particularly clear as far as plans go, but I think, if the game tries to tell me that Jay is a Symbiont after this, I might just kill myself. Set him and Jane free, one way or the other. But that might be worse for Jane, who I am not listening to right now, no matter what thoughts she’s thinking that I instinctively just know just by wondering, and of course it would leave Jay stupid traumatized, and it’s not even a clear plan. And the bloodlings would be sad and maybe never recover from acting as spare loved, and it’s nothing concrete. It’s just vibes. Just an idle thought. No big deal. Nothing to worry too much about right now.

Jay takes four of each of the two flavors of painkillers I’ve got, downing them with the lukewarm peach tea, and then lets out a grunt. 

“Hate taking that many pills.”

I laugh. “Sorry. I forget people have trouble with that.”

“You don’t?”

I shrug. “Not really. Wide throat, I guess. Not even as a sex joke thing, I can take, like, eight pills in one swallow.”

“Ilia, that’s deeply concerning.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I can assure you that if I ever kill myself, it won’t be via pills.”

He pauses, as if to go to say something, then softens. His eyes meet mine with a worry and a pity that hurt me to the bone, but also, even worse, trust. 

I said it, so he believes me. 

It’s true, and it’s nice that he believes me, but there’s something fucking agonizing about that. That he trusts me. That he believes I’m honest with him, especially when I am.

Fuck, I should probably go back to therapy after all this. Or maybe tomorrow. 

It’s fine. 

“So!” Jay says, waggling his fingers while he’s sitting at the table, the both of us waiting for the painkillers to kick in. “What, uh. What have you eaten lately?”

“Oh, I went to a diner… yesterday, I think? Lot of carb-heavy stuff. And I’ve been drinking water. And tea, now!”

“Ilia, that’s not enough food.”

“I’m aware, I’ve just had more important things to deal with. Like figuring out my abilities a bit. Speaking of which, I know it’s going to be tough, but can we maybe start using the duct tape now? I don’t want it to read my lips.”

Jay blinks, then recoils. “Wait, like, it’s moving? Right now?”

“Jay, it’s always moving. You have an eyeball in the back of your skull. It’s been staring at me since you came here.”

“Jeezus, fuck, fine, block it. I’ll get the locks redone later, it’s fine.”

By the time he’s done with the sentence, I’ve pulled out the first strip of tape with a “shriip” sound, and am already getting up to put it on his skull. 

“Should I lean forward, or–”

“I’ll guide you, just tilt your head forward for now.”

He obeys, and I touch his head to help him get it into the right position for me to stare into the eyeball at the back of it. 

It’s staring right at me. The pupil dilating in and out, actively focusing, intentionally following my hands, watching my face, tracking everything that’s happening. 

 It’s the closest I’ve looked at one of these. I’ve seen them on the backs of people’s heads, sure, all over the place, and there are differences between them. They’re not always in the same position, not always the same size, not always the same shape, even, but outside of when I last examined Jay’s skull-orb, I’ve never really gotten close to study them. 

I think it’s… at least partially outside his head. Like, the shape of it extends out, the peak of the gelatin a bit above where the skull should end. More like a cyst that’s kept open and filled rather than a gaping wound, though the similarities between the two are pretty fucking major. Looking at it, I can literally feel the things behind my eyes gearing up, starting to twist and churn and pull my awareness down into them, or up to them. 

That can wait. Just one more second. 

I carefully put the duct tape directly onto, and thus over, the eyeball. 

It squishes horrifically as it goes down, a sound that Jay clearly doesn’t hear but which I can’t help but flinch at.

“What? What is it? Everything ok?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine it’s just… squishy.”

“Well close it!”

“I’m working on it!”

Two more pieces of duct-tape later, the gelatin of the eyeball is compressed enough to fit under the three strips, and I can no longer see that horrific, shitty-ass pupil staring at me in what may-or-may-not be mirth.

“Ok. Ok, it’s covered.”

“Ok. Is that… what the painkillers were for?”

“No. No it’s not. That was just step one. For this next part… ok. You need to really, really focus, ok? I know you saw it written down, but I need you to see what I’m about to show you.”

I sit down in front of my friend, and raise up my Glove hand. 

For a bit, he just seems confused, then worried.

“Yeah? I’ve seen that, what do you–”

I open the first layer of it, having skin slide off the still-skinned parts of it and moving tendons, ligaments, and bone out into the air. Then I extend it further. I push, and the fingers split, all seven of them opening into their additional tools, sharp and many-pronged.

Jay looks like he might be sick for a moment. He even gags a little. 

But then I see him stop, and think, and look. 

“It only looks like your hand is coming apart. It only looks like it. It’s not actually coming apart, it’s just what it looks like. What it’s actually doing is… it’s…”

“I don’t know if the eyeball can hear, Jay,” I warn him. “Maybe just… mumble it?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. I… I think I see it. I think…”

And I watch as he sees it. 

I watch as his hand comes up towards one of the scalpel-tips of the Glove, tracking exactly where it is. The blade, the angle, and he reaches out to it, almost far enough to touch, almost, to the very furthest part of it. 

“It’s… like an artpiece.”

I laugh. “Please. I’m pretty sure it just looks like that cause I’m a messy bitch who had no idea what I was doing when I made it. Now. This is what I’m going to use on you.”

He flinches, eyes widening. “Wait, wait, you’re not gonna–”

“It’s a weird magic thing! It’s not just– it’s not as bad as it looks. And I think you may not even have to feel it, ok? And I need you to trust me. You… you said you’d trust me. And I can do this.”

He gulps unsteadily. But he doesn’t pull back. He keeps very still.

And he turns to look down at the table, angling the back of his skull up to the ceiling so I have a good perspective to work. He takes one deep breath, then another, then another, in, out, in, out, faster and faster as he hypes himself up, his teeth clenching, his fists held tight. 

“Just do it. Do it, do it, do it–”

“Alright! Alright, I’m doing it!”

I get back up behind him, the Glove fully deployed, and look at the duct-tape covered mess I’ve made of the back of Jay’s head. 

If I can, I’m going to try and keep the tape on it as I work. I don’t want it to be able to see what I’m doing, even though I do sort of want to see it.

I still feel the churning. Almost an eagerness, as the squirming madness behind my eyes realizes that I’m going to use it. Just like getting hungry when you open the fridge, or getting tired when you lay in bed, something behind my eyes bends and writhes and comes awake before I even fully call upon it.

And for once, I accept it willingly. For the first time in a long while, here in the real world, I call upon GLIMPSE BEYOND. 

It’s a hole. But not one that leads inside of Jay’s skull. Or it does, but… not just into Jay’s skull, because it’s not just a hole, or a cyst, it’s a tunnel. 

I can see it, through his skin, because his skin is only real sometimes, not all the time, not right now. Right now, the wound is more real, the shape of the infection, because it’s like shrapnel, except the shrapnel is also copper wire, but it’s not really made of copper wire because it’s made of… 

It’s made of gold. Gold and little squiggles that might be numbers, or circuitry, or back to being just copper wire. It’s made of things that make me think of value, things I’d try to take with me if I found them, things that cost money. And in that wire, which goes from the hole in Jay’s skull that is an eye that is a camera that is a chain that is a wound, into his head, twists around, and then goes out.

I don’t have a better word for the direction it moves in. Out. Not up, not down, not into the walls or up to the sky above or down into the dirt or anywhere in my house or outside of it, but to someplace outside everywhere, someplace that’s real but not always real. A place that’s real now, and more real because I’m looking at it, and more real than Jay’s skin even though it’s really only just as real as Jay’s skin, but on a sideways way. 

Ugh. Apparently keeping the skill repressed like that has made it mouthy. It’s telling me a lot, now, everything, and there’s so much that I’ll have to interpret and figure out later. But for now, I’m keeping everything in focus, because I don’t need all that other shit just yet. 

I just need the layers. 

There is a point where Jay and not-Jay intersect. It might be all the way down on the cellular level, might be all the way down in a totally different level that has nothing to do with cells, but it’s somewhere. The dividing line. 

If Jay is made of clay, and this is made of copper, then there’s a point where the copper and the clay are in two different parts and two different places. And I have knives and pliers and pinchers and tools that I can use to separate them.

No. It’s not clay, it’s not clay, it’s not–

A Jane-thought comes, summoned by the fear of fucking this up. Of treating flesh like clay again, after what happened last time. 

Jane thinks that I should take a deep breath. 

Ok. I think that Jane’s had a good idea. That she might be right. So I’m going to take a deep breath now. 

I do. 

It’s ok. I know better. I won’t let it happen again. I can’t. So I won’t. 

GLIMPSE BEYOND lets me see what I need to see. But INTERPRATIVE CRAFTSMANSHIP lets me convince myself of what I’m seeing, like any real delusional artist. 

Jay is clay. Soft earth, alive, healthy, thick and heavy, heavy enough to keep its shape even when I touch it, even when I pry into it. It’ll hold its shape, because it’s solid, and real. And inside that clay, dug into the side of it and turning and curling into it and back out is the wire of the wound that is money that is an eye. 

And I can sculpt. 

SCULPTOR OF FLESH triggers as I begin to push the Glove into the back of Jay’s head. I feel the wire, twisting and turning it, pulling it out and out until it’s a straight line instead of an impossible curl tangled alongside the inside of him. But he’s clay, and he holds firm, and it’s just a small line. I’m not cutting it, because the clay is too heavy, and I’d have to really, really dig to be able to even open it up. So the wire I’m pulling is getting unraveled, not cutting through anything. 

And now there’s just a straight line, leading to the orb-wound-eye-infection. 

It’s solid. It’s real. The clay is so solid and so true and so unchanging without true intent and violence and action, but the eye-wound-orb is like metal, heavier and more solid than even that. I can tell by the weight of it, by the space and style, that on its layer it’s the realest thing, but because it’s so real and because I can convince myself of what I see, then it’s heavy, and I can just…

Pluck it. Right out of the clay. Like a rock out of the dirt. 

And then there’s just the wire. 

But the wire’s also sort of a problem, yeah? Because it goes somewhere. It goes through Jay and out, even when unwound, and I don’t think pulling it through would do much. It seems real solid, there. But if I cut it, then does it die? Does it defeat the purpose? Not like Dick doesn’t know about Jay anyways, and it’s not hard to figure I’d do something, so maybe I should just cut it. 

Or. Maybe not. 

The clay is so solid and so real but it is clay. And clay can be moved. Clay can be molded back into place, and since it’s a straight line, if I just… pull, it won’t be so bad. I can pull it down, along the curve of the skull, towards the base of the neck, but before the spine–

It’s not a spine. It’s not a neck. It’s clay. There’s delicate parts in the clay, and they need to be avoided, but there’s no blood, no flesh, no bone, those aren’t real. There’s no vascular system or veins or nerve connections to think about, because it’s clay, and I’m a sculptor, sort of, and I can interpret this and if I interpret it properly then it’ll make sense. 

And… pull. 

And there. The wire is out of the clay. 

There’s a little gap, where the wire was pulled taut and cut free of the clay that it was sort of impaling, sort of tunneling through. That’s more important than the rock in my hand, just for right this second. I can smooth it all back down, take the details and the contours and the shapes as perfectly and precisely as I can and move them back into place. The Glove works best at this, moving more finely and more dextrously than my human hands could ever, and it’s a teensy bit messy, sure, there’s marks that the clay was moved and not just smoothed over, but maybe that’s a good thing. 

And then the mark is gone, and there’s a little concave space where the rock was, but no more hole going anywhere. 

I look at the rock, then. 

There’s things on it, but they’re not… they’re less real than Jay is. They cover it in one way, but not in others. It’s still a stone. I’m focused on that. It’s a stone. 

But it’s not a stone. It’s a camera, and an eye, and a splinter made of value made of ownership. 

It can still almost see. 

That’s fine. I have one more skill. 

I hold the eye, its wire dangling down through the fingers of my Glove, and put my other hand over it. Like a blanket. 

Go to sleep, little eye. 

GRAVE’S REST ⦽

The skill that I got from my time in Brian Johnson’s realm of MEAT. One that I haven’t tried yet. But with my other skills so high, so designed around seeing things, then I can sort of understand what it is. 

I remember Brian’s place. The quiet of it. The stillness. Not living, dead, but dead in a way that’s still here, still changing things, and it’s changing them towards silence, where flesh and decay and rot and infection are all still.

And some of that quiet is here now, because I have put the eye to rest. 

It’s still here. Still real. But it’s quiet now, and it can no more see than a dead eye ever can. 

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. 

Ok. 

“Ilia? You ok?”

He’s been talking for a bit. He’s asked me that a few times, I think. 

I’m here. I’m back.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

And in my hand is a little ball, soft to the touch, wrapped entirely in duct tape. Like a little grap made of rubber. 

“Ok. It’s quiet now. I think I can show you Jane.”