the series of r/nosleep | volume one: the {smile} series

{Z}ygosis

"Siasch oadriax g-chis-ge gameganza. Malprg oiad pashs plapli oiad izizop!"

"English, esiasch. We are all friends here."

"Friends?!" he spits. "You consider these ants friends? You have fallen far, brother. What happened to the Gassagen that would split these husks without a second thought? Or have you been locked inside that vessel so long you've forgotten your true form?"

"I have forgotten nothing, Mastema." My voice echoes off the bricks. The young boy I'm soon to wear cowers in a corner. Good, I think. I'll taste that emotion for days. "I'd bite my tongue if I were you, brother."

"I will do no such thing," he sulks. "This was your plan after all; your decision. I was perfectly content choosing whomever to walk inside, but you had to try them out, you had to feel what it was like as... as these animals!" He backhands the boy who whimpers in pain as a fresh bruise forms on his ear and another blossoms on his arm. "And why these?" Mastema continued. "What is so special about these?" He pulls at his own face and ears. "Is it the blood? The similar features? What is it?!"

"For years we have called each other brother. Don't you want to know what it feels like to really be so? To be blood related? To share not only our history, but our present?" I place a hand on his shoulder. My thumbnail peels back with an audible pop. "And it would be nice to feel the body age for once. Unlike you I don't get that luxury. I'm so sick of this empty withering." I shake the nail loose and smile. Flecks of flesh drip from my cheeks.

He turns and faces the furnace. "You'll forget who you are like you've already forgotten your name."

I feel the heat rising in my borrowed limbs. Black coagulated blood pulses in broken veins. "I remember my name, brother. I remember what He called me. But I am not one of His anymore."

He turns back to me with an insult quivering on his tongue. Black eyes bore holes into mine. There is a long silence only disturbed but the occasional whimpering of the boy.

"Will you shut him up?" I say.

Mastema looks to the boy and winks. The boy raises both hands in protest and mumbles something in broken sobs.

"Wait," I say. "Why can't he talk?"

Mastema takes a step behind the boy and uses both hands to pry open his mouth. A pool of blood pours out of a severed muscle. "Your pet got a little carried away," he says with a grin.

"Greta," I growl. She appears from the top of the stairs. She's carrying a sprig of lavender and holding the hand of herself. "Why?!" I shout.

"I'm sorry, Cain," one says. "He came to me like that," the other continues.

"Explain."

"You told me not to hurt the boy," says one with her head bowed. "So I didn't," says the other. "But under binding he seems to have hurt... himself."

I cross the room and push a graying finger into her chest. "Are you telling me he bit his own tongue?"

They both shake their heads. "It just... fell off," they say in unison.

"Curious," Mastema mumbles behind me.

I take a deep breath, a useless habit that I've been unable to quit. "Fine," I say through grit teeth. The boy is looking up at me with watering eyes. "I've dealt with worse."

"Like four days of rot in Bethany," says Mastema with a laugh.

I cringe. The memory lingers like a burnt image of the first sun. "Is everything else ready?" I ask the women.