Chapter Text
Flash
Crack
Lightning strikes.
A head rolls.
Eyes open.
“Where am I”, a voice questions.
‘I seem to be in pieces at the moment” The voice looks around. Body parts are scattered. “Let’s fix that.” Lighting pulses through the fingers.
Zap
Arms inch toward the voice.
Legs roll.
A torso flops to the floor, inching towards the source of the voice.
“A little assistance would be nice”, the voice thought, eyes darting to a hand. A finger bends in affirmation and crawls to a wooden crafting table. It sorts through scattered crafting tools until it picks up what the voice needs, some needle and thread. Presenting it to the source of the voice, she nods and gets to work. The limbs gather. First up, arms. Hands connect to arms. Arms connected to the torso. The incomplete body scoots toward the legs. A needle presses in and out of flesh as the pieces come together. Feet next. The source of the head rolls toward the body. Black nails grasp a neck and place it atop the neck of the voice.
She is alive.
Hands grasp the back of an old wooden chair. One leg, then the other. She is upright. Black eyes look down at her form. “That’s better” thought the source of the voice, now attached to a full body. Green. Some parts darker. Some parts lighter. All held together by black thread. Hair as black as the night. Seemingly endless. She notices a shock of white on one side, then the other. “Incomplete” the form studied. Her newly put together arm reached for two metal bolts, grabbed them, and placed them on either side of her neck, a gentle jolt of electricity coursing through her newly formed body.
A white tablecloth is draped on the craft table. Her eyes widened. Gripping chairs and tables like a safety bar, the form hobbles over. One leg moves forward, places on the ground. One step. Then another. And another. She stops. An arm grabs the flowy yet worn fabric.
Yank.
Crafting supplies fall to the floor with a thud.
The form twists and folds the fabric to her undead body. Eyes look down. Arms extend out into view. “Complete,” the voice nodded.
Her green head darts with her eyes as she looks around. A laboratory, only candlelight flickers throughout this mysterious space. Tables filled with tattered papers, rusted scissors, dented pencils, perhaps due to repeated teething. “Does this belong to a child?” She ponders, “or someone with no real sense of life.” A musty stench hits her nose. Sweat. Or is that dirt? Decomposition? Shit? Whatever it is, something was fried or burned. Aside table is another. This time, stranger. She sees jars filled with… body parts? Like hers. They’re submerged in some kind of bubbling liquid. Below them, papers with strange symbols on them. Her eyes look down, studying each one. Blueprints? Schematics? There are multiple of them. She ponders as she observes further.
A chalkboard comes into her view. She notices more blueprints. Not just blueprints, but other pieces of tattered papers. She moves closer. Newspaper clippings connected to each other by brown rope. Strange. Letters jumble together in her mind. She inspects closer. Each newspaper clipping mean the same thing, “Woman murdered by mysterious killer.” Her eyes move towards the blueprints slowly.
Multiple women killed by the same killer.
Body parts preserved in a liquid in jars.
Her mind races, putting each piece together.
She looks back to one newspaper clipping in particular. Below the headline, there’s a photo of a black haired young woman. Mary is her name.
She picks up a piece of broken glass, holding it up to her face. Her eyes widen, walking towards the picture. Her eyes go to the picture, then her reflection, then back to the picture, then back to her reflection.
“That is... my head.” She realized.
Jolts of lightning shock through her body at the connection.
“I’m…..made of these women.” She screams, her heart racing. How did this happen? Where is this assailant right now? Is he still on the loose? Her eyes dart back over to Mary’s story.
“Mary,” she thinks.
“I like the sound of that.
She moves closer to the picture, as if the two of them are touching foreheads.
“Mary,” she mourns, “I will go on when you couldn’t.”
“I will live”