Punishment

It was dirty work. It didn’t matter how often I did it- which was every night, or every day; if I’d bothered to count I might have known- it never got any less unpleasant. Dust and dirt and bones and clay aren’t good company, no matter how you look at it. That’s all it really takes to make one of them. Bones, of any kind, dust, from a fireplace or a windowsill. My place was full of dust and dark, and I had nothing else. Dirt, from graves or from the ground beneath you feet. And clay, to hold it all together. I spat in it, each time, to keep my creations at bay. They were like horses, I learned after  a time. If they learned the scent of me, they learned the lines not to cross. Even before they were born. In some inchoate way, they would not cross any line I spat onto. They would heel if I spat on my hand and held it up.

They were nothing until I gave them a name. But I could not think of any animal they were like. They were an animal I’d seen from the corner of my eye, when my mind tricked me into believing one thing was another. A smeared version of a cat, a bird, a snake. Nimble, beautiful, with a starry pelt. A collision of paints on a palette, not so much a step on the evolutionary ladder as a branch.

They weren’t good company, without voices, without tongues. Tongues came last, because I wanted the silence until I had no choice at all to hear them. Their voices made small my hands, and small hands made poor, slow work. I could have made them anything else, but I could not bring myself to make foxes or birds or dogs. Nothing I would have recognized from my life. There was no real creature I could stand to ruin.

Breathe I told the head of one as I gouged out eye sockets ith my thumb, and smoothed out the inside of the cavity. The bones of its skull were hardening slowly, the longer I kept my hands off the clay. Wake I said to the ears as I shaped them. I patted the dirt around the bones, held the crumbling clumps with clay and smoothed it into joints. Stretch. I painted mud over the rib cage, spat into the mouth and nose, separated the paws with my longer nails.

This was where it became important and difficult. Difficult to get their faces right; so much rested on how much cruelty was in their faces, what expressions I gave them. A cruel face could spur the animal to do anything, so long as it involved bloodshed. There are some animals that eat you with their eyes; my Chimaera created meals with their eyes, and tore them to pieces with their teeth. I could have not given them teeth, but they would have found another way to tear. A way I was sure I could not stand to see.

If I had the eyes to.

When someone else stumbled inside, I knew that I was close. And that it was my turn to teach. I tried to remember, how it had been done before. My thoughts were all start and stop; I could not think and keep my hands moving. But molding the Chimaera was not optional, and everything became secondary to it. I knew that, no matter who appeared here, they could not help when the time came. They might have been able to help before, though. And I bent my mind to the task of teaching them to make Chimaera with me. I had nearly made it last time. Two away. Twice as many hands might help me.

At least, that was why I assumed he was there. I couldn’t guess at anything else.

“Are you going to stand there forever?” I said when he swayed in the dark. Perhaps his feet had fallen asleep, because the rest of him looked wide awake. I had meant it to be a joke, but I’d spent too long without company (excepting Chimaera) and did not know how to make him, or anyone, laugh. In any case, I’m not sure he was listening at all. His eyes wandered from dark corner to dark corner. The problem was not the dark, but the number of corners. Which was exactly enough to eradicate corners entirely. There was just darkness on either side. No use arguing against it, though. If that was where he wanted to stay, he could stay there. “You’ve going to be here a while, though. You’ll have to get used to sitting on the ground at some point.”

He said nothing. He pushed his hands into his pockets as though he might find something, but my pockets were empty when I came. My fingers had shaken badly when I’d not been able to find my lighter, even though the craving itself never came. I wondered, if he’d had cigarettes on hand, would he invite me to have one? I didn’t kow where the smoke would go. I thought of the filter between my lips as I dabbed the pad of my thumb over the end of the creature’s snout to dimple it. There was a circle of dirt around the skull. The inside of the skull cooled, while the outside warmed, as though flesh were growing on it as I watched.

The other occupant of my place couldn’t have been old. He was younger than me, a young man, filled with uncertainty, but not fear. He looked as though he believed he’d walked into the wrong room, but truly his face just didn’t lend itself to true reactions. I had begun on the long curving spine, which involved laying out the bones atop a bed of dust and clay, rolling it between my hands after to mold it. I wrapped the clay around the chain of bones and patted it down gently. Though from what I’d seen, it could handle not-gentle.

“I don’t understand,” said my companion, without preamble. “I don’t think I can do that.”

I didn’t dare look at him. I’d not seen someone like myself in a long time and I knew that I would get caught up in it, would miss my deadline. There was so much I wanted to see in the human face from then, but I couldn’t risk it, not now that I’d finished my second-last. “I’ll show you how. It’s really not hard. The clay wants to do what you want to do. It’s about intention, mostly.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean?” I asked, though I could already guess what he was about to say. It would start like this, wouldn’t it? The way it had started with me. It had been a good time before I’d realized. It wasn’t a matter of realizing it, anyway. That was a matter of staying safe. This was a matter of understanding. “Do you mean you don’t know how to use the clay and bones? They’re the only materials you have. You’ll have to use them.”

“I mean,” he began, eyes narrowing. He looked haughty and righteous, a sinner riding on the law and riding it at the same time. “Why would you do this? Why not leave it alone? There wouldn’t be anything, then. No more pointless attacks.”

One more, I told the underside of a wing as I began stuffing the clay with feathers. I wanted to explain to him why it had to happen, but I could only think of the time, of the last of the Chimaera. It was almost time, and if this did not go as planned, he would learn soon enough how it worked.  

Chimaera, I named it as I gouged a single hole into the side of its ears and ran my tongue along its hardening teeth.

“Fine. What happens if you don’t try at all?” he said with some aggression.

I ran my hand along spine to tail, then slipped it beneath the creature. “If I do nothing, it’ll be worse. I can choose the object now at least and I get the chance to make them obey me. I can mold them however I want to.” What it boiled down to was this: I got to choose my poison. I chose one that was easy as I could make it, and familiar.

“But I don’t get it,” he replied. “What for?” He sounded petulant, as if he thought, after all this time, I was here to meant to help him. I could teach him about intention, I could teach him about clay, but he was not the one who would be facing the consequences of being a Chimaera short in a few minutes. On more.

“Because something has to happen, and I’m trying to lighten the load,” I said. There was no lightening the load, really. Only the traditional way. But it helped to have something to think of. The skull was fully formed, and two wings, four paws. I was unfurling the spine and lining up the rib café when the clay stiffened beneath my hands.

My stomach twisted. I sighed, and this sigh sounded like every harsh breath I ever exhaled at once. There had been a time before this, I thought. And there would be a time after. But it did not hide the fact that I was one short. One short of a herd of Chimaera. Just enough to turn it outward.

The Chimaera lined up on the floor twitched, like dogs waking from dreamy sleep. Some crackled through the air, a current twisting around me so sharply I felt it like the touch of an eel. I stood back to watch the first Chimaera breathe. I’d been careful to give them each kind faces, but it took all of a few seconds for several of them to scowl, and in scowling, reveal each tooth I’d crafted. They pressed themselves closer to me, and I saw my companion stiffen, as though they might come for him. They might be curious, but-

“Don’t worry about it,” I said to him as the Chimaera shook themselves awake. “Just stand back and they won’t touch you. But don’t try to interfere. Don’t try to enter or stop.” It felt a little useless to say, since I already knew what he wouldn’t be doing, and that was: he would not be stepping in front of me to protect me. I didn’t expect him to. There was no such thing as heroics in the dark.

“It has to happen to you?” he said, sounding shocked and sad and for the first time as though he understood. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t finish,” I said. Or said, mostly. I was looking at the floor when I said it, and some of that rock must have swallowed up my voice. “You have to watch this time. I guess every time, until I’m done.” I’d thought at first that the Chimaera would hurt him, or someone else. That I was creating a weapon, but it was only a weapon pointed at myself. You would think that I would be merciful then, but in this place, after the first time they got a hold of you, you stopped wanting mercy. You wanted pain to get rid of other pain. And then once you started, you couldn’t stop.

Pain begets pain I thought, as I pulled away from the circle of dirt on the floor. I could see the outline of myself where I’d been sitting, as the first of the Chimaera lunged.

They all bounded at me. Wings flapped uselessly above them, tongues rolling from their mouths, eyes happy and bright. The largest one pressed it paws to my shoulders first, then followed me down as I went. They didn’t want anyone else. They wanted me, and when the first one swallowed my scream, they got to their happy work. They didn’t seem to have a preference for whatever they took apart. They took apart my arms and legs first, snapping at them until they burned.

This is when I cheated on my first boyfriend. Something wet smeared my cheek and my ear burned. I put a hand up to the side of my head and found I did not have much in the way of ear left. This is when I lied to my mother about getting fired. One of the Chimaera twisted over me and buried its muzzle in my abdomen. I was smeared across the floor of the space. Already, my companion had pushed far back into the darkness, realized there was nowhere else to go, and wondering what would happen when his time came.

I curled inward, as though it would help. It was less the Chimaera, more the thoughts. I felt prodded into smallness. My wrists felt fragile, my ankles thin as the tines of a fork. There went another layer. I’d been so happy when my friend and I stopped calling one another. I would never have to tell her that I was sleeping with her boyfriend. I’d been glad to die in that car accident. I would have died after it, if I hadn’t. Once I’d known how few people had actually survived.

The Chimaera slowly melted away, as though they were being pushed through an invisible sieve, coming apart in the air in powdery clouds. The dust fell on my legs and clung to the red smears on the floor. Already things were starting to regrow in me. There was a strange sensation as though someone were pushing their finger into my ear. I could taste dust in my mouth and knew that it wouldn’t matter if I spit into the Chimaera’s mouths next time. It would not keep them at bay.

I put a hand to my abdomen. The skin was almost fully healed. My organs were blooming under it. My companion watched as he took a step forward. His face was drawn, his eyes asking why him, why did he have to go through it.

“I was one short,” I told him.

His wretched face became more wretched. He was gnawing his lower lip, tearing the skin from it with his teeth.

“If you’re fast,” I said, “You can get out of here fast.” I began to shape each feather I would need for the wings. I rolled clay into suitable lengths for fangs and began to taper pieces of it into points. “I had a fight with my friend. It’s not really important what the circumstances were. But there was a family in the other car. None of them made it. I was so drunk I couldn’t know until I’d sobered up in the hospital for a night. In time to have an aneurysm.”

I could see it slowly dawning in his face. And I could feel that dawn was coming too, soon. Or sunset. Either way, I was back at the beginning, with the clay and dust and dirt and spit. He seemed to realized what this meant, how inevitable it all was, the creating the turning-on-you. I’d been doing my job, teaching him, without realizing. I didn’t think he understood how long it was, though. Not when he sat down so quickly and plunged his hands into the dust.

I wanted to ask him what he’d done, to get here. To deserve it. But I’d volunteered my information. He was under no obligation to do the same. He crossed his legs, like I had, and hunched forward. He would also learn, very soon, that it was murder to find a position you could stand sitting in for more than ten minutes at a time. I shoved some more dust in his direction, then spat in the dirt to make mud to use as glue for the feathers.

His hands were dirty immediately. They wouldn’t be clean again until he left. I had gotten over that pretty quickly. As a part of my intestine regrew, I rubbed the spit and dirt between my fingers.

“So,” I said to him. “Do you know how to use clay?”

Art by Leilani Bustamante

Text by Lucie MacAulay