Scene 1. Starving Iron
The inside of his stomach was pressing against his spine.
Empty touching empty. Nothing between front and back. Not even air. A shriveled pouch folding toward the vertebrae, folding and folding again.
The hole in his chest was closed. Coldly. Completely. When he pressed his palm to it, he could feel the uneven ridge of new flesh. The dark-red drug had sealed the puncture wound, and the price it extracted had punched a hole through his gut instead. Flesh filled, stomach emptied. Equivalent exchange. Cold arithmetic.
Saliva pooled.
There was no reason for it. There was nothing to eat. The only thing touching his nostrils was mold and concrete dust. Yet saliva welled beneath his tongue. The roof of his mouth went wet. He swallowed. The instant spit hit the empty stomach, a sound climbed up from behind his navel. A growl. The sound of a beast snarling inside his belly.
He gripped the iron rod.
The steel threaded through both wrists and driven into the wall. Ten fingers wrapped around the bar. The instant he squeezed, what his hand read was different. Something cold, round, hard. Something that felt as though it contained something inside. Something that, if he bit down, would burst hot and rich—
He clenched his teeth. His molars ground together and his jaw joint cricked. He swallowed the saliva in his mouth again.
He pulled.
He loaded his arms with his full weight. His shoulders wrenched back and his entire back drew taut like a bowstring. The wall screamed before the rod did. Hairline cracks spidered through the concrete. Dust sifted down around the bar.
More.
His back muscles hauled at his ribs. His forearms swelled. Veins bulged beneath the skin like rope. The wall split. A deep groan—rebar inside the concrete catching on the rod and shrieking. Dust erupted upward, filling his nose and mouth.
It came free.
The rod ripped from the wall and his body pitched forward. His knees struck the floor. The impact shot up his shins to his thighs. Both hands held the rod. One arm's length. Heavy.
Saliva pooled inside his hands. Not his hands—his mouth. He was holding iron and his mouth was watering. His tongue swept the roof of his mouth. No taste. Nothing there. And yet the tongue was waiting for something.
He worked the rod out of his wrists. One side, then the other. The friction of steel scraping through flesh sheared the inside of each wrist. Blood should have welled, but the flesh chased the iron as it slid out, knitting shut behind it. The dark-red drug was sealing the wound in real time. Coldly. Mechanically.
The rod hit the floor. Clang.
He stood.
The beast inside his belly called again. A low rumble. Not a growl. A demand. Fill me. Now.
He walked toward the iron door. His palm met the steel. From beyond the door, a smell drifted in.
Sweat. Liquor. And beneath those, something else.
The smell of a living thing.
Saliva pooled. He didn't swallow. Couldn't. His mouth was already overflowing.
Scene 2. A Slab of Meat
He pushed the iron door.
It wasn't locked. This door didn't block the inside from reaching out—it was built to be opened from outside. The hinges groaned. Corridor air flooded in.
The smell changed.
Inside the cell, the air had been his own blood, concrete, mold. The corridor air carried something else. Sweat. The sour tang of leftover rice. Tobacco. And beneath all of those—the raw smell rising from skin warmed by body heat. Not his nose but his tongue reacted first. Saliva pooled in his mouth. He swallowed. It pooled again.
The corridor was dark. A single kerosene lamp hung on the wall. Its wick nearly spent, the flame sputtered and blinked. Light and dark took turns painting the corridor.
In the dark, his ears opened.
From the far end of the corridor, a sound. Breathing. Slow and deep. The respiration of someone sleeping—inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. And threaded between those breaths: tok, tok, tok. A pulse. The pulse beating beneath the skin of a neck, traveling through the air to his eardrums.
His feet moved.
Bare soles on stone. Toes touched down first, heels last. Sound died. A gait no one had taught him. A stride his body had never learned. His shoulders dropped. His center of gravity shifted forward.
The kerosene lamp sputtered.
When the light returned, he saw it. At the corridor's end, a back leaning against a chair. Above the uniform collar, a neck exposed. Beside a small cut from a razor, a blue vein throbbed visibly beneath the skin.
Ten steps.
The smell thickened. What had been buried under liquor and tobacco was stripping bare. Flesh. The scent of flesh ripened by body heat. Not cooked. Raw. The kind that, if you bit down, would release juice.
'Stop.'
His legs did not stop.
Five steps.
Three steps.
The back of the guard's skull entered arm's reach. Beneath the cap, a close-cropped nape. Fine hairs stood on the skin. Between the hairs, sweat beaded and glistened. Beneath the glistening, the pulse beat.
His stomach twisted.
A hand reached out.
The right hand seized the jaw. The left cupped the back of the skull. Between the grip and the twist there was no interval. One motion.
Tok.
Short. Quieter than a dry branch stepped on. The guard's mouth opened and closed. A hand twitched once. Legs slid from under the chair. That was all.
Before the body could slump, he caught the collar and propped it upright. Seated against the chair. The head hung at an angle, bent to the side. It didn't look asleep. It didn't matter.
He released his hands.
Warmth clung to his palms. The body heat of the nape. The warmth of a living thing. That heat seeped along his palm lines, past his wrists, up his forearms.
From inside his belly, a low rumble. A sound of welcome.
The pulse in the nape was guttering out. By inertia it struck three or four more times, then stopped. The sweet smell of life drained away and the tang of iron rose to take its place. Cooling. Stiffening.
He rubbed his palms against his trousers. Hard. The warmth wouldn't come off. It had soaked beneath the skin and lodged between the lines of his hands.
He stepped away.
Past the guard. The kerosene lamp gave one last sputter and died.
In the dark, bare feet pressed stone and moved forward. Without a sound.
Scene 3. Something Sweet
He walked fourteen steps.
At the fourteenth, his knees buckled.
His shoulder struck the wall. The rough grain of stone bit through the uniform into flesh. The pain didn't register. Every nerve capable of registering anything had gathered in one place. His stomach. The inside of his stomach. The empty pouch pressed against his spine was twisting and folding again. Each fold seemed to suck it toward the vertebrae. A black hole had opened inside his body. Pulling in. Never filling.
A smell came from behind him.
Fourteen steps back. The thing propped in the chair. Cooling. But not entirely cold yet. Between the tang of iron, something lingered—the residue of body heat. The sweetness just before it congeals. His nose caught it. The instant it did, the underside of his tongue burst wet. Not saliva. Something thicker than saliva filled his mouth.
'Don't go back.'
His feet were turning.
The direction had changed. His head had not commanded it. His nose had pulled. His ankles followed. The same body that had been drawn by the scent of lily of the valley in the garden. The same muscles. Only the thing doing the pulling was different.
Ten steps.
Seven steps.
In the dark, the outline of the chair surfaced. The silhouette of what sat in it. A head drooping sideways, neck broken. Above the uniform collar, the exposed nape. The scab over the razor nick had torn open. When he'd twisted the neck, the skin had pulled and ripped the scab free. From the breach, something was seeping. Dark red. One drop. Two. Spreading down the uniform collar.
He knelt.
Before the chair. The cold of the stone floor climbed through his kneecaps. It climbed partway and stopped. What touched the tip of his nose consumed every other sensation.
Blood.
Blood still carrying half its body heat. Blood on the verge of turning to iron but still holding its sweetness. He inhaled. Not with his nose. With his whole body. His lungs expanded and his ribs spread. The fused bones creaked. It didn't matter.
His face tilted.
Toward the nape. Toward the wound where the scab had peeled. Close enough for his nose to touch skin. Lukewarm warmth met his nose and mouth.
'Don't.'
His lips touched.
The flesh of the nape. Beside the scab. On the blood that had seeped out. Lukewarm. Neither cold nor hot. Through the cracked seams of his lips, it seeped in.
His teeth pressed into the flesh.
Not biting. Pressing. His front teeth pushed the skin. Beneath the pushed skin, a vessel burst. Blood surged out.
His mouth filled.
It was hot. From a body half cold, and yet it was hot. What spread across his tongue should have tasted of iron. It didn't. It was sweet. A sweetness beginning at the tip of his tongue spread to the root and pressed against the roof of his mouth. Behind it came something briny. Sweet and briny and rich, layering and layering until it occupied every surface inside his mouth. His salivary glands opened. Inside his mouth, saliva and blood mingled.
He swallowed.
Something hot dropped into his stomach. The empty pouch glued to his spine peeled open. The black hole contracted as if closing. The spasms ceased. The force that had been sucking his vertebrae inward loosened. In its place, a dark-red warmth filled the void.
One mouthful.
What one mouthful should not have been able to deliver, it delivered. Heat enveloping the entire inside of his stomach. Warmth climbing the ribs to the chest, over the shoulders, spreading to his fingertips. Nothing like the cold recovery of the dark-red drug. This was warm. The temperature of something that had been alive.
It felt good.
His stomach was at ease. What was empty was full. The twisting had stopped. The growling was gone.
It felt good.
The instant that phrase reached his brain, his body froze.
He pulled away.
His lips left the nape. A thread of blood stretched and snapped. Something dark red ran down his jawline. His tongue tried reflexively to lick his lips. He bit his own tongue. Clamped it between his molars and pressed. His own blood spread through his mouth. Iron. Not sweet.
He recoiled.
His knees left the floor and his back struck the wall. The chill of the stone pressed into his spine. Pinned against the wall, he looked at the guard. A corpse in a chair. On the nape, teeth marks. Blood was running from them, down the collar, to the shoulder.
He raised his hand and looked at his mouth. Too dark to see. Instead he pressed the back of his hand to his lips. Pulled it away. Something tacky had transferred.
His stomach was quiet.
Warm. Comfortable. The growling had vanished. That calm drove deeper into his skull than a nail through the bone.
"…Goddammit."
A cracked sound came out. Whether it was a human voice, he couldn't confirm. In the dark, back driven into the wall, he stared up at the ceiling. No light from the vent. Perfect black.
A taste lingered in his mouth.
Sweet.
His brain was denying it. Not sweet. Iron. Briny. But his tongue remembered. The aftertaste on the tongue would not fade. He'd swallowed it, and still it coated the roof of his mouth like a film.
'It was good.'
Not his brain. A signal that had risen from inside his stomach. Bypassing the brain entirely, stamped directly onto his tongue. A review.
He clamped his hand over his mouth. Between the lips crushed by his palm, breath leaked. Rough, short. The dark-red residue on his palm touched the skin beneath his nose and sent up its scent. Sweet and briny. Saliva pooled again.
He pulled his hand away. Scrubbed his palms against the stone floor. The rough grain scraped his skin. No matter how hard he rubbed, something lodged between the lines of his hands would not come out.
The dark was heavy.
The thing sitting in the dark had another person's blood on its mouth. Wedged between its teeth. Something that wouldn't come loose no matter how his tongue pushed sat between gum and enamel.
Scene 4. The Smell of Perfume
He stood.
He scrubbed his mouth with his sleeve. Hard. Dark red smeared across the uniform cloth. Once more. The scab hardening on his lips peeled and fresh blood beaded. His own blood. Not sweet.
'Enough.'
What "enough" meant, his brain did not ask. His stomach answered. Quiet. Warm. Enough. He could move now.
He stepped forward.
He walked the corridor. Past the guard's body. The smell did not pull. It was cold now. Stiffened. His stomach had lost interest.
The corridor forked.
Left: a downward slope. Right: stairs going up.
From the left, a smell climbed. Different from the right. Damp, rust, old iron tangled together. Buried beneath those—rotting blood. Neither alive nor dead. Not sweet the way living blood was sweet. Not cold the way dead blood was cold. The smell of something collected somewhere and left to spoil. A vast quantity.
His gaze followed the slope downward.
In the dark, piping was visible. Thick. The width of two human waists joined together. Running along the wall, descending. At a joint in the pipe, something dark red was seeping out, trickling down the brickwork. The trickle filled the gaps between bricks, leaving a grimy stain.
Inside the pipe, a sound.
A low gurgle.
Something flowing. Not water. Heavier than water, slower than water, scraping the pipe's inner wall as it passed. Heading toward the deepest point beneath the mansion. Into the darkness below.
He turned his nose away.
Right. From the top of the stairs, wind was descending. Pushing away the smell of rotting blood from the slope, flowing down the steps. And carried on that wind—
Perfume.
Thin, cold, sharp. Not flowers. The smell of winter trapped in a glass bottle. A cold manufactured by chemistry. He had smelled this before. The shoe heels that had descended into the dungeon carrying a lantern. The lips that had pointed a finger at Ian's chest through the bars and said you.
'I'll send Yeonhwa your regards.'
Those words resonated not in his eardrums but in the roots of his molars.
He stood at the foot of the stairs.
He looked up. Stone steps climbing into the dark. Twenty or so. At the top there would be a door. Beyond the door, a corridor. Somewhere in that corridor, the owner of this perfume would be sleeping.
A taste lingered in his mouth. Sweet, briny, rich. Over it, the cold scent of perfume layered. His stomach did not react. The stomach was full. But his molars reacted. A fine vibration rising from the roots. Not something he wanted to chew. Something he wanted to tear.
His foot landed on the first step.
Bare sole on stone. A bloodstain printed. The second step. The third. The perfume thickened. With each step upward. The rotting-blood smell from the pipe receded behind him, and the cold winter of perfume filled the tip of his nose.
The blood on the corner of his mouth was drying. Hardening. A scab that wouldn't come off no matter how he rubbed with his sleeve sat on his lips. A scab made of another person's blood.
On the face of the thing climbing through the dark, there was nothing.
No smile. No fury. No regret.
Only the amber eyes cutting through the dark, fixed on the top of the stairs.
Coldly.
Sated.