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You look over the disguise you’ve laid out.
A dark tailcoat made out of a thick wool- you’d stolen it from George’s closet, and it sits a little awkwardly on you, like you’re a child playing pretend- over a black satin waistcoat, over a white collared shirt. It’s far too many layers for your liking, all stuffy and overly formal, but you need it for what you’re about to do.
A promising young man must not make a bad impression on the Speakers by showing up to his initiation in anything less than full formalwear, after all.
So the clothes are ready. You cross that off your mental to-do list, looking over everything one last time. You don’t put it on- you want to minimize the amount of time you have to spend constrained in starched fabric with seams that make you want to rip your skin right off your flesh.
You’ve already practiced your ‘man expressions’ in the mirror, casual disinterest and the jut of the jaw so that your face looks sharper, like you’re older than you actually are. You tiptoe to the vanity mirror- quietly, too quiet, because your heart is beating so hard in your chest that if you make a single sound you’re afraid you’ll scare yourself half to death.
You lean in closer, try to look at yourself as if you were a stranger, blond hair and violet eyes and, if you allow yourself the joy of imagination, a bit of stubble ghosting across your jawline. You run your fingers over it, take one more look at your attempt at the “Speaker look”- sadistic, polite, a little bit bored- and deem it good enough.
Time for the hard part. Well, not really. The rest of it was hard enough. But this is the part that will cement it, make it impossible to go back to what was before, that name and that face and that future, tied in a marriage.
There is a letter opener on the vanity, resting atop the last message that George has sent you. He’s in town again, you realize faintly. Maybe you’ll go visit.
But you banish that thought from your head. The letter opener is cold in your hand, wrought iron handle and long sharp blade, and the afternoon sun paints it butter-yellow on the flat of the blade. You can almost taste blood in your mouth. Not that you’re going to do anything like that with it, of course. Just trim your hair, make it a little less obvious that you- well.
No need to keep thinking about that. Besides, if you wait too long to do this, you’ll chicken out, and then where will that leave you? A failure, something whispers from inside your ribcage. Yes. It’s time. There’s only a couple of hours until the gala starts. Best to be done with it.
You hold the letter opener up to your neck, hand trembling, making the cold edge of the blade rest dangerously close to your skin. No. Breathe in, breathe out. Steady your hand, position the sharp edge so it rests against the golden curls that have weighed you down for so long. Cut.
Well, maybe cut is the wrong word. The letter opener is dull, and you have to saw at it, making bits and pieces float down to the floor in jagged ringlets. You run a hand along your newly-shortened hair, feel the uneven edges and ridges from the rough treatment with the blade.
Euphoria wells up in your chest, even though you look like a chimney sweep or a street orphan with the way it falls around your ears in an awkward semi-bob. You run your hand through it, fluff it up a little, look at the way it hangs around your jaw.
Maybe that was why you didn’t hear the footsteps, the knock on the door- because George always knocked, you know that, he must’ve, even if you didn’t hear it- didn’t notice your brother standing in the doorway, eyes wide.
He steps in, closing the door, and that’s when you see him, and your hand reaches instinctively towards the letter opener lying abandoned on the vanity. He says your name- the real one- softly at first, and draws closer to you- and then a little louder, when your hand doesn’t leave the handle of the knife.
“George.” You say, name rolling off your tongue, heavy like a marble in your mouth. He already knows, your real name and the desire within you to be a man, to be who you really are, shed your skin like a butterfly or a snake and slither out with the proper scales, the proper outside, show the world that their initial impressions of you and your gender were mistaken.
“Silas,” he echoes, and he’s closer now, too close, and his hand comes up to your shoulder and you flinch away. He puts his hand down.
“Silas, what is this?” He tries to keep the shock out of his voice, the judgment out of his voice, but that thing in your ribs catches the edges of a hard look, catches the hint of disgust in his tone, and replays it endlessly in your mind.
“Preparations.” You say simply. Your eyes dart between him and your stolen clothes, out of reach, too close to the door. You need those, you need that layer of armor, protection against the world- your disguise, your shield, I’m just like you, no need to hunt me.
He catches your anxiety, and waits where he stands for a moment. You can almost hear the gears turning in his head.
“Preparations for what?” He finally asks, tone soft, as if you’re a child. It makes you angry, somewhere inside, sharp and stabbing at your heart.
“The Speaker Gala.” You state, words dragged out of your throat as if caught by a fishhook and forced up from your guts, still red and wet with viscera.
George has an unreadable look on his face. That’s not necessarily a rare occurrence, but still. It frightens you, makes you wait for his answer with bated breath, makes you come up with backup plans- if he tries to stop you, grab the letter opener, you know what to do with it, you’ve kept up with your studies- as he stands there, statuesque, silhouetted in the light of the golden sun as it starts to dip below the buildings that make up the city skyline.
“And why would you do that?” He says finally. “You don’t want to be one of them, do you?” His voice lilts up, a little dangerous, and the rabbit in your chest gets ready to run. “You’ve never liked those matters. Unless more has changed in the past months than I’ve realized.” He laughs a little. You don’t.
George glances back towards your suit- well, his really, you stole it from his closet- and then looks towards you again. His gaze skims your cheekbones, the new jagged edges of your hair. He knows you don’t like eye contact.
He sighs.
“I didn’t want to.” You confess. “It’d just be… easier.” George has a way of getting you to talk. The rabbit squirms, does circles around your lungs, hides in the space between your heart and your spine.
He beckons you to sit on the bed. You do. The mattress creaks under your combined weight, and you trace patterns in the flowery bedspread with a finger. George moves as if to put an arm around your shoulders, pauses. You nod. You feel hollowed out on the inside, staring at the vanity mirror, at your dull eyes and the jagged swoops of your hair.
“Oh, Silas.” He says, soft and quiet. His hand rubs circles into your back. You don’t know if you like the way he says it, the way it makes you feel very young and vulnerable. The rabbit trembles in your chest, scrapes its paws against the inside of your ribcage.
His gaze shifts to your jagged haircut- you can tell because he stills, and his hand hovers over the haphazard strands for a moment before retreating down again. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah? And then I have a proposition for you. One I think you’ll enjoy very much.”
His tone is cheerful, as if nothing has happened, and you perk up despite yourself. A proposition? Interesting.
-
The proposition was not interesting. The proposition was Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanatorium.
Not going there, of course- George promised he would never do such a thing. No, he had been offered a deal there, by the headmaster of the school. The girls were dying of a mysterious ailment, and he had enlisted George to find out what it was through autopsy. And now you got to tag along, too.
You’re excited. You know you shouldn’t be- these are people that died horrible deaths, after all. But you’re excited nonetheless, because George said that he’d let you perform some of the autopsies and practice your skills, and that if you got good enough now you’d have a surefire placement at any medical school in England. So yes, your heart beats in your throat, and yes, your leg jiggles in the backseat of the carriage, but it’s excitement flowing through your veins, not terror.
And to think, you were going to become a Speaker! How preposterous. How unlike you. This is your true passion- surgery. All of the ins and outs of the body, how to take it apart and put it back together. And now you get to practice on real cadavers, with a real surgeon as your guide. Even the dreary winter weather can’t dull your enthusiasm.
The horses slow to a stop in front of the building, a looming thing with columns and soaring peaked roofs and windows like knocked-out teeth in a large, foreboding mouth. You shiver, and you tell yourself that it’s from the cold.
You and George step out, both bundled in your respective layers of coats and jackets and hats and scarves. You run a hand over the back of your head, feel smooth, short hair. Your heart beats faster in your chest.
George had cleaned it up for you, as promised, and helped you pack and slipped you out of the house. What he told Mother and Father, you do not know- but they have not come asking about you, and now George introduces you to everyone as Silas, my assistant, sometimes my brother, and it makes that ecstatic thrill go through you each time, as intense as the first time you heard your name fall from someone’s lips. You don’t think it will ever dull. How can it, when it is such a marvelous thing, to live life as oneself?
You both walk up to the front door. The steps are slick with ice, and you grip the wrought iron handrail so as to not go sprawling over them. The metal is cold- colder than it should be, almost- and burns your hand, and you are relieved to be rid of it when you’ve reached the top.
The brass knocker thuds against the wood ominously once, twice, and you wait with bated breath before it swings open and reveals a woman. She and George engage in small talk, which you quickly tune out in favor of taking in the grand interiors and swooping beams that line the arched ceiling like ribs of some great beast.
You follow them inside, stomping the snow off your boots. George takes off his coat and his scarf and leaves them by the door- and you hesitate for a moment, still unsure of yourself, wondering if you take the coat off they will see you for what you really are, what the thing in your chest tells you that you are- but you shrug it off and hang it up neatly next to George’s, and try to look nonchalant in that manly way, unbothered and uncaring.
The three of you- you, George, and the woman that you’ve learned is the headmaster’s wife- ascend one of the two grand staircases that curl around the entryway, towards what you presume is the headmaster’s office.
The room itself is grand, but there’s something dark about it, something claustrophobic with the deep green velvet curtains with the gold tassels and the dark wood bookshelves that seem to lean closer every time you look away. You fidget with a loose thread inside your pocket, scanning the book titles as George and the headmaster talk.
You hadn’t expected there to be this much talking. You figured that you and George would just come in, deal with the body, perhaps write a report, give the report to the headmaster, and that would be it until you were needed again. But maybe all of this was just because it was the first time you were doing this. Or at least, you assumed it was the first time.
The thought of George hiding something from you makes your skin crawl, makes the thing in your chest gnaw at your heart, little what-ifs fluttering through your mind. But you brush that aside.
The conversation is dragging on, and you glance at George. He gives you a subtle nod, so you slip out of the room and go back downstairs, shrug on your coat and re-wind your scarf around your neck.
The cold seems harsher now that you’ve known the warmth, so you duck farther into your warm ensemble, feeling reassuringly cocooned in the heavy fabrics.
Snow blankets the grounds, making hedges into vague cylindrical heaps of white that disturb the otherwise flat landscape. Spindly trees claw at the gray sky, and you can barely see the spindles of churches in the distance.
You tromp through the snowbanks, leaving deep footprints behind. Your hands are shoved in the pockets of your coat, and you look down as you walk, watching your step- wouldn’t want to trip over anything, after all. Not that it’s doing you much good. It’s hard to tell what’s under the snow, whether friend or foe dwells under the shroud of white.
You’re so focused on your task that you almost forget what you’re doing until you hear someone clear their throat. You look up to see them- long, lanky, dark hair and dark eyes- and your nose wrinkles at the smell of tobacco before you can stop it.
The stranger chuckles. “I was going to ask if you wanted any, but I assume that’s a no.” They’re holding a cigar in their hand, and smoke wafts lazily into the winter air. They’re leaning against the brick wall that marks the back of the school- had you really walked that far?- and they must’ve been here a while, because there are little snowflakes stuck to the wool on the shoulders of their coat.
You don’t know why you’re calling them they - maybe it’s the set of their shoulders, the bags under their eyes, something that makes you think they might be like you.
“I’m alright, thank you.” You drag the words out of your stomach, remember to defer politely, drop your voice and set your shoulders.
They shrug. They’re wearing a red scarf, ruby against the pale skin of their throat, and your eyes seem caught on it like a fish on a hook.
You watch their breath drift out of their mouth, white clouds mingling with the tobacco smoke. The smell burns the back of your throat, and normally you would leave, but your eyes are still snagged on that red scarf, those slender fingers.
“What’s your name?” You ask before you can stop yourself. You finally manage to wrangle your gaze away from them and turn it towards the snowy grounds. There’s a greenhouse in the distance, and the fence that encloses the property, a dark line against the gray sky.
There’s a pause. It stretches out, like thread unspooling between you, and for a minute you panic- did you push them away? But then they respond, voice soft, a whisper so you have to strain to hear it.
“Daphne. My name is Daphne.”
Daphne. You roll it over in your mind, sharp edges and smooth corners, Daphne. It’s fitting, you decide.
“I’m Silas Bell.” You don’t hold your hand out to shake, and she- for Daphne is a woman, you can see it now, even with her hair cut short and her voice deep- doesn’t ask for it. But it’s not a bad thing. It’s comfortable, now, the silence that settles over you two, watching the deer pick through the snow in the distance.
“Pleasure to meet you, Silas.” She says. Your name is soft in her mouth, velvet.
But you can’t contemplate it too long, because then George peers around the corner and spots you both. Daphne snubs out the cigar on the bricks behind her and you watch the ashes flutter from the butt to the ground, staining the snow.
George’s face softens at the sight of you. “Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
You glance towards Daphne, but she’s facing away from you now, so all you see is her dark hair and her dark coat and the barest hint of red, a bright slash peeking up over the collar.
“Nice meeting you,” you say, but she doesn’t respond. No matter. You follow George back around to the side of the building, stopping when you happen upon a little door half-hidden behind a snowdrift.
George sweeps the snow aside with his boot, revealing the dirt underneath, and pries the door open. The hinges squeak terribly, and your hands fly to your ears. He casts you a pitying glance, beckons you inside-
“Sorry. I’ll tell the headmaster they need to be oiled.” He says, and you duck under his arm as he holds the door open, with him following behind you.
The warmth makes the blood rush back into your fingertips, your nose, the edges of your ears, and you shiver in response. George stamps the snow off his boots. He’s not wearing his coat, you notice, and you feel a twinge of guilt- he came all the way out to find you, in the cold and the snow, without anything to keep him warm.
This is some sort of servant hallway, barely more than an alcove with a mat to wipe your feet on and a series of hooks for jackets and things. You shrug off your coat, hang it up just so, unwind your scarf from around your neck. Mother always told you to take good care of your things, after all.
When you’re ready, you go into the next room, following George. It’s a hallway, lit by candle sconces bolted into the brick walls. It’s more than a little claustrophobic, and you find yourself folding inwards, ducking as if the ceiling is going to come down on you at any moment.
George seems oblivious to your predicament, continuing onwards through the almost maze-like system of corridors and halls until you arrive at a small unmarked door whose handle refuses to budge where George tries to twist it.
He makes a little ‘ah’ sound and fishes through his pocket, revealing a silver key that he sinks into the lock and turns-
You haven’t peered through the Veil in a long time, ever since you ran away, and you’ve grown distant from it- but the sheer amount of wrong that seeps out from the doorway is enough to set your hair on end, make your teeth grind in your skull.
It’s cold, colder than outside, slinks inside your flesh and muscle and worms its way around your bones. The thing in your chest kicks, shivers, screams.
Shadows pool in the corners, in the little divot of the floor, pour out from the steel drain set into the cement. There is a gas lamp in the corner, and it’s not enough, never enough, to keep the darkness from overtaking it, and your breath comes fast and hard in your chest, something is reaching for you, something wants to rip out your heart and eat it whole-
George hums to himself. He starts rummaging through the cabinets that line one wall, finds what he needs- metal tray, scalpel, scissors, scale- and starts arranging things as he likes.
“It’s nice, no? Very professional.” He comments, and you nod silently, for the darkness has crawled into your mouth and pins your tongue down.
He glances over at you, and maybe notices the terror in your face, the shadows spilling out from between your teeth, because he steps over and pats you on the back. “I know it’s a lot. But this will be good for you. No medical school would ever reject someone who’s trained under a licensed surgeon like this.”
He smooths down a bit of your hair that’s sticking up. And you doubt yourself, doubt if what you saw was really otherworldly or just innocuous shadows cast by the flickering light of the oil lamp. You want this. You need this, because if you do this then you can go to medical school, and once you’ve graduated you can have everything you’ve ever wanted- the title, the practice, everyone calling you sir and he .
You wipe the back of your hand against your mouth, in an attempt to get your vocal cords to start working, to dislodge whatever thing is keeping your words in. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
-
The next time you come, Daphne is nowhere to be found, and there is a body on the operating table.
The darkness is worse than before, thick and cloying, and you can feel it prod at your eyes, your closed lips, slip its way into your ear canals and pry until it can slither inside your esophagus down to your stomach and settle there.
The girl is pale and thin, so that her bones protrude terribly, ribs and clavicles and vertebrae. Her hair is brown and cut in a messy bob, one that reminds you painfully of your first version of your haircut.
George gets out the tools, scalpel and scissors and bone saw. You open the sternum and see red.
-
And so life continues. You and George only come in maybe once every two weeks, so you spend most of your time following George around to his appointments in town and exploring the woods. You don’t see Daphne again, and you almost let her fade from your memory- maybe she was a groundskeeper, or some rich man’s daughter here to visit a relative, or something of the sort.
So you remember the red scarf, and the slender fingers, but give up on seeing her again, even if it sends a pang through your chest. You don’t have time for relationships, though, especially when you seem to mess them all up. You’ve got a job to do.
The girls are all the same, or similar- pale skin, too thin, bones jutting at harsh angles, mouths set into sharp little lines, rebellious even in death. You feel bad for them- of course you do! Who wouldn’t, seeing their corpses, bruised and bloodied and miserable?- but in a detached way. That wouldn’t be you. It’s not you.
Besides, they’re all dead from their sickness. Veil sickness, George calls it. And you doing the autopsies is helping them. You are lucky, you know that, to be able to live as a man with your violet eyes. It feels fitting, somehow, to be the one working on the cure for their ailment, all of those violet-eyed girls.
The autopsies go like this:
You cut the chest open, using a Y incision from the collarbone to the lower abdomen. George lets you do it, now that you’ve shown him your hands are steady, your stomach not too weak to handle the splitting of skin and flesh.
Then George peels back the three flaps you’ve made with your cut, and regards the organs in their natural places in the body- you can recite them all by now, know where they lie in relation to everything else, perfect puzzle forged through natural selection or God or both.
You take out- well, not you you, both of you, it goes faster with four hands- the organs, weigh and inspect them. George scribbles down notes on his form in his looping, slanting script. You put the organs back, sew the incision up carefully, smooth your hands over your work to make sure it’s presentable. You close the girl’s eyes, tuck her hair behind her ears, fold her hands over her chest.
Clean all the tools, put them back in their places, blow the oil lamp out, lock the door. Wait outside for George to finish filing the paperwork or whatever he does with the headmaster, look around for Daphne, try to get the taste of the dark out of your mouth.
George comes back, so now you take the carriage to your little cottage you two share, that some man named Lord Luckenbill has graciously allowed you both to have in exchange for ‘your valiant battle against this disease.’ Rinse and repeat.
The room has become no less unsettling, no less frightening- you feel the darkness growing tighter around your lungs each time you enter, feel it slither along your throat, tap at your larynx and your alveoli and all of your tiny hidden places. But what can you do? This is the job, and you are good at it, and you will become better at it, because this is your ticket out of here. This is your ticket to your dreams, right?
Besides, it’s for a good cause. Everything you do is for a good cause.
You tell yourself this at night, but it doesn’t make you feel any better.
-
You come in one day, and it’s different.
For one, George goes in through the main door, and heads to the second floor- the headmaster’s office. Secondly, you see Daphne again.
She’s smoking another cigar in the parlor off of the foyer, sprawled across an intricately carved mahogany sofa upholstered in deep blue velvet. The whole room is dark, drapes half-drawn over the windows, allowing only the narrowest sliver of weak winter sunlight in. Twin sconces flanking the fireplace opposite the sofa try their best to beat out the darkness. It’s a losing battle- shadows crowd in the corners, the recesses of the curtains, under the furniture.
There are bookshelves that line the walls, some full of various series of books- you think you see an encyclopedia, a world atlas- and others full of curios, like what appears to be a collection of silver filigree spoons.
You slip inside, feeling oddly exposed- vulnerable, guilty like a child caught stealing candy- and pretend to be interested in A Woman’s Guide To Modern-Day Fashions .
Daphne moves the cigar from her lips and exhales. The smoke clouds the room, making everything a little blurrier, a little harder to distinguish. You shift your weight from foot to foot.
Daphne sighs. More smoke clouds the air. Your nose twitches involuntarily.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” She asks. You turn, face her, pretend to look surprised- as if you had forgotten she was even in the room. But then the words process in your brain, and you’re not pretending anymore.
“I’m sorry?” You ask. Your voice tilts upwards, a question, a challenge.
“What you and your brother are doing to those poor girls.” She says. She takes another puff off the cigar. Your mouth turns into a thin little line.
“We’re not doing anything to them, unless you consider an autopsy a sin.” Your voice is restrained, now. Flatter. What you usually sound like, when you’re not pretending. You had hoped she would be like you. Would be sympathetic to what you’re doing.
A sigh. Another puff of the cigar. She looks at you, but her eyes are more sad than angry. It’s hard to tell- you’re not good with this stuff. The thing in your chest kicks, beats against your lungs.
You can tell when George enters, because she looks up at him- standing somewhere behind you- and she tightens, muscles tense. Her grip tightens on the cigar.
“Pleasure seeing you, Silas.” She says and stands. It’s like watching some elaborate machine, all graceful movements and lithe limbs. Daphne gives George a polite nod and slips off into the depths.
George places a hand on your shoulder, gentle. “Who is that?” He asks.
“Nobody.” You shrug his hand off, and he doesn’t make an effort to touch you again. He knows how you are. George would never do anything that you didn’t like. He’s your brother- that’s what they’re for.
“Did you get all of your things taken care of?” You ask, in an attempt to change the subject. The thing in your chest was starting to itch in the silence.
“Yes. The headmaster and I just had to discuss some things. Nothing bad, don’t worry.”
“Can we go home now?” Daphne’s eyes swim in your vision as you try to decode what she meant. What she said- what you and your brother are doing to those poor girls. It makes your head hurt. It’s time to go back to the cottage, lay down in your dark room, read medical textbooks until the shape of every muscle, every bone is burned into your mind.
George nods, and guides you towards the doors, and you follow.
-
The topic comes up over dinner. You’re picking at your potatoes- plain, like you prefer- and George is sitting across from you, sipping the broth from his bowl of chicken soup. He always did that, even when your parents scolded him. He said it was the best part.
Your chest hurts, and you rub a hand over your heart absentmindedly, as if to calm the thing inside.
George notices, but doesn’t say anything. The sound of his sips is too repetitive, and now it grates on your ears, and you fantasize about throwing the bowl to the floor and watching it splinter into little white fragments.
The words trip out of your mouth before you can stop them. “Have you found anything? About the disease.”
George pauses, and the silence that ensues almost makes asking worth it, because the sipping noise is gone.
“Yes. Of course. The research has been quite valuable, and the headmaster is glad for our efforts.” But there is something else, something waiting on the tip of his tongue. You swallow heavily, and it feels like a marble sliding down your throat.
So this is it, you think, and maybe Daphne was right.
“What have you found?”
George takes another sip of his soup, and you dig your fingernails into the flesh of your palm, feeling the pain ground you. Porcelain shatters in your mind.
“Brain lesions, mainly. Curious things.”
You force yourself to let go of your hand. Blood wells up, hot and red, in little crescent cuts. “Is it possible to study such things on the dead?” The words are not your own, parade themselves out of your mouth like a conquering army around a newly captured territory.
George shrugs. “No, not really. But it’s the best that we can do.” You relax a little on the inside. See? Daphne was wrong. George wouldn’t do- that . He’s a man of science, after all, of principle. He knows when to stop.
“Unfortunate.” Trips out of your mouth.
George nods, sighs. “Here, let me get that.” He whisks your dishes away- his bowl of soup, your plate of unfinished potatoes- and disappears into the kitchen. The darkness seems dark and thick in the corners, but you walk through it, picking up your feet higher so as to not get stuck in the shadows.
Everything is alright. George wouldn’t do that. George doesn’t do that. You’re helping them.
-
You start doubting yourself again when it’s time for the next autopsy.
She was an interesting thing- dead because of a massive cut through her stomach, a do-it-yourself cesarean section. George hummed and said ‘interesting’ and you stitched it back up, closed the red mouth gaping in her belly.
But you had done it, cut deep and dark through the chest, fished out the organs all on your own, and then closed it up after, left her looking peaceful in her eternal sleep. You tuck her dark hair back, close her eyes, clean the tools and lock up.
George goes to the headmaster’s office, as per usual, and you laze around in Daphne’s foyer- for that’s what it is to you, now that she’s left her mark on it, searing the memory into your brain- waiting for him to be done. The clock ticks past four, then five, and you start to grow antsy.
You pace, and then flap your hand at your side, back and forth. You tiptoe up the stairs, head for the office at the end of the hall, but it’s dead silent and you can’t see shadows under the door.
So you made the decision to go back into the servant hallways, retrace your footsteps to the autopsy room.
The hallways are dark and cold and musty, like rust and old stone and rain, and you wrinkle your nose as you walk through them. You shiver, cold- perhaps you should’ve brought your coat- and bring your arms in tighter, collapse your shoulders so as to fold into a small thing out of some sort of childish instinct.
The autopsy room door rears before you, wood and metal, and for a minute you relax- this is your territory, you know this room- and then you touch the doorknob, and it is so cold it burns. You grip your hand to your chest and cuss under your breath- fuck!
The darkness is alive, and it crawls over your shoes, winds its way around your legs, roots you to the spot. You grasp the doorknob firmly, ignoring the pain, and simultaneously shove inwards with your shoulder.
Hinges creak, out of practice and unoiled, like a rasping voice over a dead larynx. The room is dark, so dark, and cold- so that your hairs stand on end, so that your blood rushes to your cheeks and your nose and the tips of your ears, all your vulnerable places.
You step inside. “George?” You call out, and the darkness hisses, plunges into nooks and crannies and everything it can touch. You fumble for the oil lamp, light it with an extra match. The flame gutters and dies against the dark, but you catch a glimpse of a body with a sheet over it. Strange. You never put sheets over them.
You walk closer, hand hovering over smooth satin. You pull it back to reveal her face. Two things are immediately apparent:
First, she has no eyes.
She had them, once, that is apparent, by her sockets and her eyelids and the weeping red of her skull, but they are gone, stolen from her, stolen by-
“Silas? What are you doing in here?” He says.
You turn and look at him, really look at him, and the shadows in the corner of your eyes scream all at once, lookatuslookatusseewhathedid, whatyoudidtous, seeit-
Secondly, this is not the person you cut open at noon. No, this is someone different, harsh cheekbones and sharp jawline and pixie-cut hair.
You stumble backwards, so that you bump into her, and there is a heartbeat under your fingers.
This time, it is you who screams.
George’s eyes widen- they want you to see, to see everything that happens, like they have seen every single taking-apart in this room.
“What- what is this?” You don’t say his name. It’s heavy, weighs in your throat- a glass marble stopping up your insides, corking your voice up like a bottle of wine.
“Progress.” George says. He steps closer, and you press back into the autopsy table, cold metal stinging your hands.
The spirits shriek. You flinch, but George doesn’t look as if he’s heard it- steadfast and steely, hard eyes looking into yours. “No. This isn’t- this isn’t right.” But you doubt yourself even as the words are still tripping past your tongue. This is helping them. You’re helping them.
You slide your hand along the autopsy table in the dark, feeling for a left-behind tool, a sharp fragment of bone, anything you can use to- no.
You can’t kill George. He’s your brother, as messed up as he may be. He’s the only one that’s ever accepted you. The only one that’s ever cared for you. Without him, you have nothing.
“Sometimes we have to disregard what is ‘right’ in the name of science, Silas.” He tilts his head. “I thought you knew that.”
There is nothing but white satin and blood and flesh under your hand. You try to shift towards the cabinet- that’s where all the blades are. You just need to distract him a little longer…
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He hums, and it echoes off cement walls, off of stone floors with metal drains in them, off the carcass of the woman on the table.
“Why do you care?”
You stutter, hesitate. Your hand brushes against the metal knob of one of the drawers.
“I want to be a part of this. In fixing it.” The words are fake and sour, ashes and bitterness on your tongue. The darkness rises up again, presses against your eardrums, your eyelids, your mouth.
George grins. You see his teeth shine even in the dark, white and sharp, perfect. You pull open the drawer behind you.
“And here I thought you weren’t ready. I guess I underestimated you.”
Your hand fumbles through the contents of it. Looking for- there. A scalpel. You run your thumb along the edge of the blade, testing it- yes, still sharp- and you lift it out of the drawer to hide it behind your back.
You take a step forward, then another.
“What a pleasing development. I knew that we were alike, Silas. I knew that you would understand.” He spreads his arms, as if preaching or about to embrace you, and you rush in. You know where to go- what to do- and the scalpel slides cleanly, nicely between ribs and punctures his heart.
Red seeps down his shirt, filling the air with the smell of iron. His facade slips, cracks, shatters- porcelain dashed on a stone floor.
Hands fly up, try to trap your wrist to his chest, but you pull the blade out anyway- quickly, cleanly, as he has taught you how to do- and watch as blood spurts out of the wound, as he grasps at the hole in his chest and doubles over, sinking to the floor.
It is cold now. The spirits roar, and the ground shakes, and you can see the blood on the scalpel blade freezing over into a thin red slick. Ice crystals collect on George’s eyelashes, his hair.
You are a numb thing, raw and unsteady and yet unable to respond to the chill that nips at your bones, rips at your flesh.
You’re still looking at his body when the door bangs open. A figure- a spirit, maybe, with blazing green eyes and dark hair and an aura or vengeance about her- swoops inside, a force of nature rather than a person, and you watch her with eyes blurred from the cold as she scoops you up and carries you out.
Somehow, the winter is warmer than the autopsy room, and your vision clears as you look up at her. The snow is melting, seeping into your shirt, making everything unpleasantly damp, but you can’t find the energy to complain.
There is blood on your hands, your face. It mocks you, bright against the snow, a reminder of what you did. Of what you had to do.
“You were right,” you say. “You were always right.”
Daphne nods. She takes your hand and lifts you upwards, into the daylight.