Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

new sound behind my ear. shrill, metallic. sounds like the arms or legs of a machine clicking into sharp-angled positions. something cold and rigid presses on either side my neck: the metal was clicking for me.

“You sure you have nothing to tell us?” man with the mirror asks. nervous edges flutter in his voice. sounds scared of what’s about to happen. “Look,” he says, drops his voice down to a whisper, slides closer. “We don’t have to link you up. You just cooperate, and we won’t have to extract the information. It’s easier if you talk. Can’t run your story without full details.”

something heavy and round pushes against the base of my skull. panic wells up in my chest. gulp wildly. try to suck up enough air to force sound out of my mouth. Can’t speak! Can’t speak! Can’t speak! strain so hard my body jerks against the restraints. veins and vocal cords bulge in my throat. feet pound the floor.

“I know, I know,” clipped-tones says spreading his hands out. “Just stop. I know you can’t speak. We just… We’re going to have to…”

“Enough with the warnings. Just get on with it already,” mumbler says. “You know the drill. Let’s move.”

“She can’t speak,” man with the mirror says. looks over my head at his partner.

“Don’t matter,” says the mumbler. “They want the story by 8, it’s going to run at 10. They’re already advertising.”

a few drops of water fall out of my eyes. “extract information.” they’ll dig through my memories like starving squatters clawing through a garbage dump. grab my emotions, download them, dress them up, and beam a tearjerker to the NewsNet. who cares if there really was a bio-anger. there will be one now.

flash of light—blinding—rips across my vision. inhale deeply. “Pain,” i think. “That was pain.” was pain? hear a tortured yell. behind me, the mumbler is losing it. wet, feral screams splattering against my back. clipped-tone man jumps out of his chair. his mouth moves but I hear no words.

something is wrong.

no more pain. splitting headache, gone. heat rests weighty between my legs. arms and hands don’t feel like mine—they feel thick and heavy. the room, the clipped-tone man, and the NewsNet banner all melt away. i am sitting in nothingness. nothing around me but a table laden with piles of ghostly flesh. not meat, not food—human bodies. curves of elbow and knee jut out from a sea of skin. here and there an ear, a chin, a pair of lips poke up from the jumble. my mouth moves easily. i lick my lips. no pain in my jaw.

i am aroused.

when my mouth moves, a voice trickles out. the voice is disembodied and tangled—and it is not mine. it is the same voice that has been muttering behind me since i woke up tied to this chair. the mumbler’s voice pours from me, stream of broken diction rambling about women and the marks of saliva he’s left behind on their skin. this is the mumbler’s voice; this must also be his tongue. his tongue resting in my mouth. his tongue moistening at the thought of ghostly flesh made real.

odd memories begin to rain through my body. i am seeing and remembering parts of the female body that i’ve never touched. salivating for the crease of a breast resting on a fleshy torso, longing to push apart meaty female thighs. i fall back into my body for a split second. the room is just as i left it—stark, bright, unadorned. i am still tethered to a chair, and the mumbler is still yowling like an animal. clipped-tone man is behind me now, speaking to the mumbler in a voice that pulses with both worry and soothing. then i understand:

that cold metal circle. the pressure at the base of my skull. the wrong source—it’s tapping into the wrong source.

hunger whips through me like an electric shock, bringing me back to the mumbler’s table. i am the mumbler. predatory. needy. hoarder of fleshy victories. this is my table now, i own these body parts. i need what he needs: bodies, flesh; have no use for feelings. crave the tabled flesh. lift my bound hands, reach for it. hunger erases my boundaries. the room, my bruised body, it all slides away. the mumbler’s memories gush into me, become mine.

something funky and toxic pulses deep in the viscera of my body. a multitude of tiny dried pellets, brittle-shelled capsules lodged deep in my bowels. that’s what’s left of these women after i have lain with them; fed of them, then condemned them to this ghostly pile, this monument of memory.

i sift through limbs, searching for flesh that hasn’t soured or been sucked dry. searching for a ghost that will yield her heart. not the heart that beats blood, the heart between her legs; the heart that speaks to her in feverish rushing whispers. the heart she works hard to ignore.

i finger ghostly bodies, reenact his methods to shut down thought, pluck away restraint, create a frenzy of need until the heart lodged in the chest is silenced by the cacophony of blood rushing between thighs.

i conquer.

i am aroused.

my arousal agitates; the fleshy pile begins to writhe. emotions spray my face. shake my head, fling off sentiment, drown out tears. the mumbler whimpers. i feel his fear. suddenly i am back in the room. clipped-tone man speaks quickly and forcefully. a sharp beeping rings out; relief floods his voice.

“They’re coming, someone’s coming now.”

“Get…” the mumbler speaks raggedly. “Get the story.”

pain clings to the mumbler’s voice. pain that will soon be mine. close my eyes. force myself to pretend to go Under. imagine i feel water slipping over my suit. remember the loud hush of air trapped in my headgear. solitude.

the metal circle taps into me. sharp, icy sparks shoot down my spine. it takes the peace from the water and suffocates me with it. my throat fills with water. then as i’m gagging, the memories come, flying at me like the tail of a stingray. whap! the wiry, steel brush slams into my cheek. when it pulls away, it’s red with my blood. hiss of blade nears me, then cuts a path across my other cheek. a pounding on my back. i go down to the sound of cracking bones—my bones.

in the nightmare again. my tormenters watch me crumble. i can feel a waiting in them, a waiting that tells me they don’t want my pain. beating me is the prelude to something else.

inside the memory and seeing the memory at the same time. glittering crumbs of glass halo my body. wiry brush, wet with my blood, rests on the ground next to my head. acrid odor wafts from the brush. have i been poisoned? for a brief second, my consciousness splits. begs to move on from this memory to the next. there is no bio-anger here. brush’s odor grows stronger, bitterness against the NewsNet solidifies. hate what this memory has given them: raw fear, brutality, a violent attack, all the emotional material they need to send a report. what is real—what really happened—doesn’t matter. pummeling fists will become murderous seeds or heavy, violent fruit. muscular arms will become thick green vines. they record every detail: the tremble of my body, the fluid burning my eyes and leaking onto my cheeks.

the memory does not stop. while i lay inert, burly hands flutter over my face. the hands—disembodied against the backdrop of dark, grubby clothes—hold small lumps of metal nested in palms. the metal glints as the hands dip closer. the men blot out light with their bodies. fingers, quick as fever, attach metal to my mouth. the metal lumps, spider-like, begin a many-legged prancing around my lips. spindly legs prick me rapidly, piercing the skin, pulling the saliva out of my mouth.

skin around my mouth, blistered, stinging. the men paw through their pockets. their hands cradle round, foil-covered balls. my face feels as if it wants to split open. they pull away the foil, uncover powdery white globes. break the globes in half. lodge broken globes between teeth and cheek. slower, prancing metal legs move slower, and slower. stiff with terror, lie there. afraid to touch my mouth, afraid to move my arms.