My beloved I am to be executed.
Morse code. I begin to cry. We haven’t used this form of communication since we were children making forts in the woods. I don’t know the circumstances, or what specific transgressions he’s been accused of, or when or how or what, but I know that when the Tribunal orders execution there is no bargaining. Even if Trinculo were granted a trial—unlikely, due to the vast number of his violations—his trial would merely be theater for the rest of us. My mind and throat lock simultaneously. My body goes cold and stiff. For a time I think I can easily will myself to die, right there in the idiotic cell. But then a rage comes over me like none I’ve ever felt before. A heat that begins in my belly and twists up my torso and flares out toward my rib cage. I sit up. The spider clings to my neck. I clench my fists hard enough that my fingernails dig into my palms, leaving little half smiles.
They cannot have him. I will not let them. Our lives may not be worth anything in this moronic CIEL world of pageantry and void, but one might yet bring meaning to a single life; one can still take one’s energy and direct it toward another, fully, unto death. I don’t know how I will save his life and get him off this orbiting pot of hubris, but I will find a way.
The spider has one last dance before it leaps away from me and into some crack in the system.
-. --- -. --- - -. . . . . .--. .- . .-. . . -. - . -. -. - --- -.-. --- -- . - . . . .- -.-. -.- .- . . . -.-- --- .- .-. . . . - .- --. . -. .-
Do not despair I intend to come back as your vagina.
My dear Trinculo. Finding light in death, sex even in doom.
I see neither him nor the spider again, before I am escorted back to my living quarters.
My plans are not changing, just evolving. Just gaining in human plot and depth. However, my rage is changing. She is beginning to take on an epic deathsong. The song. In my head. It’s coming back.
Chapter Ten
“Is there any chance of serious permanent injury?” My pupil looks at me, courage skin deep at best.
“What, you mean like burning through to an internal organ, like a heart?” I stare at her little head. Why are young adults’ heads so little? They look malformed. “We have no time for stage fright,” I say matter-of-factly. “Leave your fears outside my door or go do something else with your life. This is serious work, I have a deadline, and I don’t have the time or the patience to handhold apprentices.” I sit upright and stiff and look her dead in the face. Her skin is so translucently white it looks almost blue, as if her veins and arteries are gaining dominance. No, not blue, aqua—blue-green and pallid. Or maybe I’m just trying too hard to remember colors. She has grafts on each shoulder, tiny ornamental wing patterns, and some idiotic positive maxim. She looks like some cross between an amphibious creature and a baby eagle. I have no intention of mouth-feeding her. She’d best grow talons in the next sixty seconds or she’ll be out. “Make a choice,” I say. “Now.”
She gulps.
Her epaulets shiver.
“Listen, why do you want to do this?” It seems a fair question. Most of my former pupils come on a dare, or for the novelty of being the one who can scar people rather than being the one scarred. Whether they knew it or not, I always knew there was a hint of sadism to the choice. The best grafters were more than sadists. They were masochists as well. More: they were comfortable with that relationship, that dance between selves. And they couldn’t stay away from it if they tried.
“I . . .” Her words swallow back down her throat.
“Right, then,” I say, and start to pack up my tools.
“Wait!” She grabs my forearm.
When she does she immediately draws her hand back, as if she hadn’t expected the layers and layers of textual content there. We both look down at my arm, its white and tanned intricacies creating an entire poetic landscape where skin used to be. Then she puts her hand back on my arm and holds it there, running her fingers over what is there as if she is reading Braille.
“I want this.” This time her voice is steady and at least two octaves lower. Her eyes meet mine. Her silly shoulder grafts recede behind the square-shape of her jaw. I see some strength in the aqua color of her skin—a little hint of defiance. “I want to be good at it. I want to be better than other people at it. I want people to come to me and ask for it.”
There is hope for her yet.
I begin. “The electrocautery method I use requires a pen-like tool containing a red-hot, exchangeable tip.” I lift it up in front of her face. “See? This technique has a higher accuracy than others; it offers the most control, the most consistent depth and width of burn. As in tattooing, one traces the design over a stencil. When it comes to textual grafts, however, it’s best to draw on personal taste to help in type designs and the shapes of lines and stanzas and paragraphs.”
God damn it if the words are not burning in my throat as I say them. Trinculo designed and made these exchangeable tips for me. And so I find myself resuming my instruction with a kind of berserk vengeance, crying all the way through over Trinculo’s fate. The girl cannot see my tears. They pool like salted pearls at the corners of my deep-set eyes, hidden by a few folds and curls of flesh I grafted in the shape of ocean waves around my eyes and brow bone. Each tear makes its way down the raised rivulets and hills covering my cheekbones, then slips imperceptibly into the corner of my mouth. I drink in my love and anger and fear.