Page 19 of Writhe
Then another.
Then they descend.
I watch, fascinated, as they burrow into him, tiny claws raking at his skin, sharp little teeth carving out ribbons of flesh. They go for the soft parts first—the lips, the fingers, the eyelids. He thrashes violently, but that only excites them. His agony makes them frantic, their tiny bodies writhing over him in a seething wave.
He slaps wildly, crushing one against his cheek. Another scrambles up his chest and plunges its teeth into the soft flesh of his throat. A deep, wet tearing sound. Blood spurts into an arc, staining the stagnant tile below.
I exhale slowly.
Beautiful.
The rats are inside him now. I can hear them gnawing, burrowing, squelching through his meat. His body jerks in sharp, involuntary spasms. His voice is nearly gone, reduced to bubbling, garbled gasps as blood and bile flood his mouth. His fingers twitch, curling inward.
I check my watch and Raines squats near the edge, watching with mild interest. “What’s the point of this one?”
“Testing limits,” I say, clicking my pen. “Pain tolerance. Psychological resilience. The effects of extreme stress on cognitive function.”
“And?”
I gesture to the pit.
The patient’s eyes are rolling back. His mouth opens and closes in weak, shuddering gulps. One of the rats is halfway inside his stomach cavity, wriggling, devouring him from the inside out.
I press stop on the recorder. “A success.”
His body goes still. The rats do not. Stockton and Raines glance at me, awaiting orders. I take one last look at the ruined thing in the pit. The twitching mass of meat and vermin; the wide, staring eyes now are nothing but hollow sockets.
I turn away. “Clean it up.”
There’s hesitation. A new orderly has been watching in the corner. He’s young, trembling. He looks pale and sick—his breath stutters in his throat.
Weak.
I meet his gaze. “Unless you’d like to join him?”
His face drains of color. He swallows hard and nods, stepping forward on shaking legs. I watch him for a moment, then turn toward the hallway, already considering the next patient, the next experiment. There’s always more work to be done.
THEO
Rina sits across from Eliza in the rec room, talking incessantly, her words spilling over themselves in frantic waves. She’s smaller than Eliza, with bird-bone wrists and wild blonde hair that she never bothers to brush. Her eyes—too large for her face—dart around as she speaks, never quite meeting anyone’s gaze. Like she’s waiting for something to come lunging out of the shadows. She has the kind of energy that’s exhausting to watch. A wind-up doll cranked too tight, desperate to be heard, to be acknowledged, to prove she exists.
Eliza, on the other hand, is the opposite. Still. Contained. She is my perfect little doll. She stares at her book, fingers curled tight around the edges, but she isn’t reading. I know because I’ve been watching her—I always watch her. She hasn’t turned a page in ten minutes, she’s just pretending, trying to disappear inside of it. Trying to disappear from the world.
It won’t work.
I don’t just see her, I feel her. Like a pulse in the air, a current under my skin. A wound I can’t stop pressing my fingers against, an itch deep inside my skull that I will never be able to scratch. I want to split her open and crawl inside—wear her like a second skin. Make her mine in a way that can never be undone.
“Are you even listening?” Rina’s voice snaps.
Eliza blinks, dragged back to the surface. “Mm.”
“Mm,” Rina mimics, rolling her eyes. “You’re so full of conversation today.”
Eliza offers a ghost of a smirk, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. It never does.
A sharp, wet sound cuts through the low murmur of the room—a sob.
The patient strapped to the chair near the far wall is shaking, his thin frame wracked with desperation. His wrists are bound, ankles strapped down, body curled forward as much as the restraints allow. His voice is raw from pleading.
