I was glad I didn’t eat anything that day because the sight of flesh falling off the chains, and the knowledge that said flesh used to be someone’s face turned my stomach. I did my best to keep my disgust at bay and breathe through my nose every time I had to pull away at its muscles, but the sight of it, and the thought of the amount of pain it must be enduring crawled under my bones.
By the time its face was released, only a few pieces of hair were left and its eyes, which seemed to blink a lot better, remained. It missed the better part of its nose and mouth, the lips looking like dangling pieces of meat rather than a proper way to speak or eat.
“Do you want to eat now?”
Two blinks.
“But can you eat, are your teeth okay?” In my defence I’d been invested in this from the start, so I did not think the question odd at all.
Its jaw shifted just enough to open part of its mouth and show me teeth. Human looking teeth.
“Awesome, so we can have meals together from now on.”
One blink.
“Do you want me to continue?”
This question merited a small, barely noticeable dip of its chin and I could only wonder how much pain that single action took. Which in turn told me that it wanted nothing else but get rid of these chains.
“Okay, okay,” I nodded. “I won’t stop until we’re done.”
“Plee..z…”
Shit, it talks.More like it grunts and sounds barely pronounceable, but still.
“Okay,” I nodded again, determined, and fully committed to this. “I’ll get you out.”
I kept my promise, the job taking us both into the late hours of the night.
The last chain was out. I was so tired my entire body shook, my hands especially, from the weight of the chains I had to constantly pull. A massive pile of bloodied iron remained splayed around me. Around us.
It was finally free, but instead of jolting, trying to run or jumping away, the faerie fell to the ground with a thud.
Nothing much remained of it, only a torso and limbs, all covered in broken flesh. It reminded me of the anatomy lessons I took as a child, where they showed us a picture of the human skeleton and another picture, right next to it, with the categories of muscles and how they curved around the body.
Because that is what it looked like. There was no proper portion of skin that I could spot or analyse, only bones and meat, somehow still put together to reveal a human-like figure. Only those green eyes had remained. Pinned on me since the very moment I started pulling, observing me for hours on end until the last clink of the iron armour they had forced on the subject fell.
“Hey, hey, are you okay?”
I didn’t want to touch it, did not want to cause more damage and pain so I followed it to the ground, tilting my head to make eye contact with the faerie. Who exhaled deeply and blinked at me again.
“Sleep…” it spoke before shutting those green eyes that swam in relief.
“Okay, I’ll let you sleep,” I murmured, lowering my voice.
A few seconds later the faerie was either passed out or deeply asleep. Not that there was a major difference between the two, its body completely shattered from the iron binding.
“Feed Gale.”
Short and to the point. And very easy to do, were the faerie ever going to wake up. It slept for the entire day and into the late evening without moving once. I mean, who could blame it? Had it even been able to sleep until now, trapped in those burning iron chains?
What in the hell had PDD done to it? And why was it now falling to me to care for it? How could I befriend and extract information from a creature who was skinless, in pain, passed out and half dead? Without even knowing what kind of information I was supposed to get?
This was weird, so damn weird. Someone was either messing with me and pissing themselves while enjoying my struggle on the cameras or this was bigger than all of us and everything was too classified to even be revealed.Welcome Gale. Feed Gale.
I fucking would, if Gale could wake up and eat.
Fuck this, I’m going out.“Open the door, I’m taking my accrued leave,” I announced to the ceiling robot I hadn’t spoken to in two days.
