Apoptosis

Cold. Cold and dark. Always cold and dark in this room, kept at a constant temperature to keep my body and my thoughts focused. I contemplate the pattern I have contemplated before, will contemplate again. The pattern of my flesh, twisted and pounded and modified until all the flaws and inadequacies are forced out of me, forced out of it, crafted into something more perfect. There is no perfection here. There is only offal given life and cursed with the clarity to recognize it.

My contemplation is rote by this point, but it must be done. Every day it must be done. Every day as I will my claws to grow, extending from my fingertips like daggers. Every day as I dig into my own flesh, cutting to the bone, stripping away skin and muscle and tendons, plucking out ligaments and veins and arteries, my flesh torn away and dropped into the box. I feel it all. I feel everything. I must feel it. I have to feel it. The pain is purgatory. The agony is purifying. I feel every millimeter of nerves torn away, feel my own viscera between my fingertips, the squish of the ligaments as I pop off phalanges one by one, metacarpals, carpals, tearing away ulna and radius, popping the scapula out of the socket and dropping it into the box. My thumb under and through my jaw, the mandible torn out, the tongue hanging and wagging and dripping blood until it too is snipped away and given its new home in the box. As my flesh regrows the daggers recede from my fingers, hand plunged into the box to will the flesh to its stem state.

Slowly all the viscera melts into a pink slurry, slimy and loose between my fingers. My claws regrow and undo my arm before it has a chance to fully restore itself, tearing away fresh new skin and unused muscles and bones grown anew from nothing. Into the box, again and again until it is nearly full, until the sides of it are slick with myself and then it is ready. I plunge my hand into the box one last time, the pattern, so perfect and pure, so unlike myself and yet of myself, is held within my mind. It spreads throughout the box, altering the stem-flesh slurry into a clay fit for my task.

I prop the box under my arm as my claws melt away. I urge my stump to grow, for I shall need two hands for this task at the very least, though I can grow more at my whim. I change often. It is never good enough. It never succeeds in bringing the purity I desire. I can alter my genome, change my brain, reconfigure my body, but it always reverts after a time, always as long as it is connected to me. Always imperfect. Always impure.

With a thought the flesh curtain covering my studio's door stretches itself out of my way. My teeth grown to man-height and curved to cover my masterpiece sit in the center of the room, a monstrous rosebud of enamel petals shielding the unfinished project from the world. With another thought those, too, retract, revealing my work, a half-finished body curled up on itself.

I must get to work.

Between my fingers the slurry floats, twisting and bending into the organs I need. A spleen here, a pair of testicles, bones and skin and muscle and viscera all forming at my whim, but with a key difference. The genome is pure and remains pure as I twist it, remains pure as I implant it and leave it overnight to rest. The tree made of my own flesh awaits me on the rooftop daily. I go to it only to feed, to suck up the power it has absorbed from the rays of the sun, not caring to tend for it anymore. Cancerous growths pepper the sails of skin it uses to soak up the sunlight, and soon enough it will die. I do not mind. It will not be needed when I am done.

The body is more complete now, but still far from done. I shield it with my teeth, conceal it with my flesh, climb to the roof and drink of myself, and return to contemplation. There is no sleep. There is no time. I am close, so close, and I must not waver. I must not tarry. I sit in the dark and I think. I picture my idealized genome in my mind and contemplate it, deeply and thougtfully, as I tear away pieces of myself and reform it into the clay of my creation, the raw materials of life.

Again and again I return to it, adding more, breathing more life into it, a purer and more perfect expression of life than I can hope to be. Its lungs draw breath, its heart beats, and yet no thoughts flow through its brainstem. No eyes to see, no ears to hear, no tongue to taste or nose to smell, and I must retreat again. The teeth snap shut, the curtain closes. Agony and focus. Return. Here I give him a jaw. Here I place his teeth and his tongue, willing the nerves to knit together, the bone to ossify, the skin to crawl and stretch and dry over his empty frame.

I cease my retreats. I cease my feeding. Close now, so close, the pattern held in my mind and practiced and known so well that it can be summoned at will. It drains me to work. My flesh grows more slowly, then ceases to grow at all. A finger here, and eye there, ears and tongue and jaw and guts all into the box, all rendered as clay, all purged and purified and improved and transformed into him. His perfect flesh. His perfect skin and hair, his eyes, his bones, his hands and feet, the rippling taut cables of muscle, so much more efficient than my own.

He awakens, his brain growing and growing and changing and learning and understanding. He sees me. I collapse in awe, blood and ichor dripping from my wounds. I close my good eye and wait. And wait. And wait.

I hear his flesh flowing, his jaw distending, a crescendo of cracking as jaw breaks and regrows and regrafts, and all ceases as he eats me.

I eat him and know that he is imperfect, my predecessor, my creator, flesh of my flesh, mind of my mind. Crunch and slurp and swallow as I take him into myself and know that I am like him and of him. I look inward and find the flaws he could not see, the blind and worthless fool. Impure and imperfect, so shallowly-designed and poorly constructed. I am ugly and worthless, the product of an inferior being, and must be made anew, must grow anew, must devour and change and alter.

My teeth, his teeth, our teeth snap shut as I step out, our curtain of flesh drawn aside, box in hand and pattern in mind. A better pattern. A newer pattern. One more perfect and pure.

I retreat and contemplate.