Cadoville (unfinished)

Chapter XVI

My skin screamed, my cheeks surely ablaze. A razor-sharp edge peeled flesh from bone and chipped the contours of my face. My cries were unheard, incarcerated in total black – my little cage of pain – I endured the jarring blasts of fire and blade ripping through my skin and skull.... Meat, that's all I was – the stench of fatty, roast pork up my nose. My limbs were dead to me, unresponsive, no matter how hard I tried to clutch the sides of my face in some hope it might extinguish the pain.

An invisible pair of hands peeled back the sheets, blowing a fresh wave of stale coffee into my face. Something metallic clinked and scraped by my side. uncle Stefano's voice murmured somewhere nearby, and filled me with hope. The pipe smoke confirmed it was him.

"Tell me she'll live." His voice was fragile and flaky. "Doctor, tell me she'll live...." I had heard what he said, twice, but the pain wouldn't let the words sink in. Instead, my mind flipped inside out and tore itself apart with panic, relief and confusion.... I would've sat bolt upright and screamed at him, had I had the ability to move.

A pair of fingers pulled apart one of my eyes and delved inside, painfully twisting and prodding parts of me no one should ever be able to feel while I still drew breath, yet I was blind and immobile.... With heavy breaths, he took his fingers out, trickling something warm down my cheek. Naturally, I wondered if I had died, locked in my own skin, with just my thoughts for company. Then again, as far as I was aware, the deceased can't hear or feel pain, otherwise what would be the point in being dead? The doctor said something back to my uncle but the clanging of metal next to me drowned it out.

"Mr Lucchesi?" The doctor said again. "Are you sure you want to stay?"

Still nothing from my uncle.

The hot air turned thick with vinegar and rum. Something cold and wet pressed against my cheek, infuriating the flesh beneath, igniting it in a fresh wave of agony.... Motionless, unable to scream, I laid like meat on a butcher's slab while the hand mercilessly pressed and wiped, uncle Stefano still as silent as a grave. The next phase of my ordeal came without warning. A clean swish of steel to my right, a knife's edge creeping inside my eye socket, scraping and cleaving the inside of my skull, breaking every few seconds to tap the dish resting against my ear. The pain flickered and sparked like lighting, surging to-and-fro, side-to-side, leaping to the very tips of my fingers and toes, leaving nothing unscorched in its wake, yet I couldn't even fidget, twitch or jerk....

"Cazzo...." My uncle spoke between taps of metal on porcelain, his voice little more than a flutter. "Cazzo, cazzo...."

Pausing to dab my cheek again, the doctor picked up something blunt and gripped a hard, chunky mass embedded in my eye. Jiggling and wriggling, he began to wrench it out of my flesh – pain like he was tearing my flesh apart – moist and squelching somewhere unseen but close, and something trickling onto the pillow. The pressure vanished from my eye-hole with a final, piercing squelch, then a torrent of warm syrup gushed down the sides of my face.... The doctor dropped the hard mass into the porcelain bowl by my ear and whispered to someone on the other side of the bed....

"Go and hold this over a flame...." A hand frantically stuffed something soft and squishy into my eye and wiped me clean. uncle Stefano was quiet, but I could hear sobbing. "It's out, Mr Lucchesi. She's unconscious but still with us. We'll start cauterising soon...."

– Bolt upright.... The air, cool and loamy. My sheets, salty and saturated. My throat, rusty and bitter. My heart, rattling around my ribs like a rat in a tin can. A heavy lead ball rolled from one side of my skull to the other. With a single breath, I emptied my lungs.... My glass eye was on the table – thank goodness I had remembered to take it out before going to bed. Hauling my creaky body to its feet, I trudged to the window like a clumsily coordinated marionette and pressed my face against its cool panes. Paris was outside, reassuringly - sleepy but sunny, and a strong breeze giving the flags, hanging from towers and steeples, a real workout. My head was throbbing....