An Eye for Love

Fashioned from curled rinds of flesh, twined sinew, dry and cracking. Sheaves of viscera rustle and flutter through her body in a breeze of movement; flakes and dust sift loose.

She has taken an eye.

Look there.

The eye whispers; she can hear its voice, sibilant and moist, from where it rests in the hollow above one cheek. There is a sodden weight to the thing, cradled in thirsty bone. It pivots in the socket, dilates.

Look--sstop. Tracks. Trackss.

The eye is lonely. It can't be trusted, she knows this. But there is a kind of game to it; the eye must be mostly truthful if it is to have any influence at all.

She shuffles onward.

-

Her memory is a palimpsest of traces and impressions, each moment scrawled atop that which came before. She can make out only the past few days before the lines fade into a vague wash of smudged graphite. She does not remember how she acquired the eye, but she is sure it does not belong to her--it has not begun to wither or rot.

It mutters and plots when it thinks she is not listening. It hums snatches of unfamiliar melodies as it drifts into sleep.

There are corpses here, laboring beside the tracks. They wield sledges and pry bars, pull out the ties, cart off segments of rail in long wagons harnessed to great oozing mounds of fresh muscle. The muscle has been harvested in thick strips, lashed onto frameworks of scrap iron and animal bone. Here and there the end of such a component protrudes from among the ropes of raw meat, glistening.

The sun will be gone sssoon, it warns.

The corpses do not react to her approach, except occasionally to nudge at her with moldering muzzles as she passes, or turn yawning nasal cavities in her direction and huff like hounds. She ignores them, makes her way to a loaded and sagging wagon, seats herself among the lengths of old steel. The wood creaks and rocks beneath her as the bound muscle lumbers into motion. Darkness is falling. A lullaby echoes faintly inside her skull, like a dream.

-

The rail is being transported back along the inflamed seam of earth where the tracks have been dismantled. At one point her wagon rolls past the rusting hulk of a derelict engine, cast up now on a low hummock like a beached ship, overgrown with reeds and creepers.

The eye reports sight of small, scrabbling movements in the shadows of the ruin, and sharp-featured skulls peering out from the hollows. Scraps of tattered flesh hang from them like hair, it tells her, fluttering in the wind.

-

It is dark again before the wagon rumbles to a stop. At first there is stillness, as if the muscle has simply ceased to function in mid-stride. Then, sounds. Light footfalls pepper the ground. And something with a heavier tread, drawing near; she can feel the vibration carry up through the wheels. Rail shifts and settles beside her.

The eye is trembling. Light, light, it pants.

Suddenly the rear gate drops open with a crash, and some massive, powerful thing begins to scoop up the rail in careless armloads. She is jostled roughly as loose lengths of steel tumble around her. There is a ratcheting snap from one leg, crushed beneath the segments; a sensation like ripping canvas as bone grinds in the socket and shivers apart.

She clutches at the wagon and pulls, but she is caught fast. Seconds later the heavy steps return. She is seized along with the rail, lifted into the air. She flails her arms, claws at the steel with hands of bone and nail and gristle, but the thing seems unaware of her efforts.

Light! The eye suddenly freezes. It's fire--no, it's--they're smelting the steel, smelting the ssteel...

She feels it, now. The heat is palpable; acrid drafts blow through the hollows and voids that riddle her body, and singe the frayed edges of her parchment skin. Desperation is taking hold. Something buried is rising up; something forgotten is beginning to show through the smears and scratchings. Her jaw creaks open and she draws breath, working her rib cage like a bellows. A rattling hiss emerges. She knots a fist of leathery muscle in her throat, drives the breath through more forcefully.

She screams.

The sound rings through the air, cutting the din of work and motion, and as it slowly dies away a murky hush settles down in its place. She senses an unknown number of heads turning in her direction. The eye moves restlessly, but seems reluctant to break the silence.

She can hear footsteps. They are unhurried, and uneven; lightweight, but not skeletal. She can hear the pads of flesh make contact with rough stone, where bone would skitter or scrape. She is surprised by the touch of fingers, and almost flinches away. They are soft, warm. Mysterious. They rest delicately on her face, for a moment, in stark contrast with her own coarse, brittle hide.

There is a continuous flow of small, subtle sounds from this creature--a muffled thrum like rushing liquid, the susurrus of rhythmic respiration. Then, a voice: "I can't believe..."

Pause.

"You don't remember, do you?"

She feels a slight quivering, and realizes the eye is laughing. Or weeping.

-

He is a rarity. A living man.

He is a symphony of motion. Tiny movements, shifts and vibrations. He moves a hand, taps a foot. Turns his head. He breathes. Always, he breathes. The eye lingers on him for long minutes; it follows his flickering fingers, travels up and down the length of his body, studies the curves and planes of his odd, elastic skin.

It tells her of all these things and more, but it will not speak of his face. It refuses to meet his gaze.

"You have become shy," he says. "You must trust me when I say it was not always so."

The living man has an ornate lockbox on his desk. He turns an intricately wrought key and the lid jumps with an audible click. Pieces of glasss, says the eye, filed smooth around the edges, and chiseled into delicate shapes. He is handling the objects with care; he cradles one in his palm, lays a finger upon another... He is pondering.

"I am not the man I was," he says, removing a translucent object. He rolls up his sleeve, applies a sharp point to his arm. The eye watches in fascination as the vessel slowly fills with crimson fluid. "I am more."

He approaches slowly, glass in hand. His breath quickens as he draws near, briefly stops as he lays a palm on her shoulder. The warmth of his touch is strange and compelling; it stirs old memories, raises fleeting emotions. She craves it, despite the sound of brittle skin crackling beneath the light pressure of his fingertips.

"I am..." She is trying the words. Tasting them. They whistle through broken teeth, flat, toneless; they are drawn thin, past any sense of meaning. "Mmorr..."

"Yes," he whispers.

He sprinkles a few drops onto one hand, and reaches toward her. His touch is warm and moist; the liquid sinks quickly into her flesh. There is a dark smudge now, just above her navel.

A curious twisting sensation is beginning to take hold, as of viscera and musculature shifting. Veins and arteries long unused, dry as old twine, seem to stir and creep like worms in warm earth. She touches her belly, lightly, with the tips of her fingers. Like writing in the dust.

The man takes her hand, drawing it aside. His other hand he lays between her legs, and where he touches her, there is a rustling sensation like a breeze passing through her body. It feels as though her flesh is parting before his fingers, folding away like the onion skin pages of a well read volume. Then there is heat, spreading out low in her abdomen. And moisture, seeping through desiccated tissue.

"See, now?" The man is close; his voice moves against her skin, warm as blood.

"You can remember this, I think," he says, moving his fingers gently. They feel hot, burning her insides. Hot and slick within her. The blood, she realizes. He is applying his blood inside her body. The heat of it is creeping into her hollows and empty places. Her flesh begins to soften in his hands like warming clay.

She feels her lips part, and then a gurgling moan escapes her throat as he palpates her more deeply, working the revitalizing serum into her. The memory returns. It is her vulva he is working this lifeblood into. Her leathery labia he is parting with his fingers. The deep opening within, that he is probing with hot, pulsing digits. She feels a flowing inside her. Her inner canal moistens at his touch.

The eye is frantic. She can feel it twitching in the socket, this way and that. She tightens the confining bonds of sinew around it, turning the eye downward. Curious. She listens.

Red hand moving, wet and glisstening, it babbles. Our body is a dry lakebed of cracked and flaking flesh beneath his hand, moving up, smearing red and sslick along the way. He takes hold of our withered breast and the dusty flesh grows firm, absorbing the sspreading redness.

"I knew I could bring you back," he says, squeezing her softening breast in his hand, feeling her nipple between his thumb and fingertips. This too she begins to recall; her nipple growing larger, more supple, beneath his palm. It tingles with newfound sensitivity at his touch. It hardens in his hand. She feels an urge to work her rib muscles, to draw in breath. She gasps with pleasure.

"That's right," he whispers in her ear. "That's my girl. Come back to me."

She tosses her head, feeling the need to arch her neck, and turn her face upward, lips parted. There is an iching, a sensation of tightness, and then a shuddering thump, thump, inside her rib cage. She feels a thick coagulate push sluggishly through the dry and brittle corridors of her unused old passageways. It is like dust and dirt churning to mud beneath a sudden rain after long drought. She takes breath after breath, as the man moves his fingers within her, and with his other hand gently works her breast, pinching and pulling on her nipple. He leans in and she feels his lips, hot and wet, upon the network of partially exposed tendons and pipeworks that make up her throat.

"Aaahhh..." she rattles, shaken by all she is experiencing at his living hands. Her flesh tingles at his touch. He feels like fire and water coming together, everywhere he lays his fingers upon her. The sensations spread over her body through newly flooded arteries.

She brings up hands of dried out ligament, glistening now with new moisture, and gropes, fumbling, for the living man. She grasps his arms, his shoulders. She feels his neck. She places her hands lightly on his face, and explores his soft, fleshy cheeks with her skeletal fingertips.

The eye is vibrating with alarm as she turns her face toward the man's. She can make no sense of its mutterings. Her hands creep over the man's features as he draws her near enough to feel his hot breath upon her lips. She feels his nose, his heavy brow. One eye, moving quickly beneath its delicate lid of living skin. He has it closed, in their embrace. His arms are around her, with a hand crawling through her brittle hair. He slides another down to caress her lower regions. He takes ahold of her there, seizing her buttock. His fingers quest into the crevice between, feeling her vulva, now flowing with a thick syrupy wetness. He pulls her in and holds her body tight against him, and she feels... something... press in upon her, throbbing with an insistent burning heat against her groin.

"I will claim you back from this undeath," the man grunts, his mouth moving against her own mouldering lips, and she feels a thick intrusion parting her flesh down below. Her labia, growing softer and more supple now, stretch where once they might have simply torn apart under such an assault. She feels warm living flesh push into her body. His cock, swollen with hot blood, spearing into her, making her insides squirm and undulate against him like a swallowing throat.

"Unghh," she groans, grasping at his head, still feeling around his face as she sinks onto his burning shaft. Her fingers feel their way over his eye, closed and twitching this way and that. They feel past the bridge of his nose. Then there is a space, a... void. She dips her fingertips into a deep crevice, and he jerks, crying out, and plunges into her fully.

"I sent it out to find you," he pants, as she feels her way into the socket above his cheek. The eye--her eye--flicks over. It meets the man's face.

He--I know him, it says simply. I was him. His face, with that eye I remember well, my brother. Thiss hole, this ssocket yawning, empty, dark and black, was once my home.

"I sent it out for you," he whispers, plumbing her depths with his rock hard member, "and it has returned you to me, my sweetest."

She feels viscous juices seep out around his stabbing thickness, and moans softly. He kisses her, pressing his tongue in between her brittle lips, to slurp wetly against hers, tattered and dusty as it is. Though it grows more moist and firm by the moment. She kisses him back, and suddenly it feels right to roll her hips slowly as he penetrates her. She works the flesh of her oozing vagina over his straining cock, sliding herself up and down upon him. Her cries grow more frequent and louder as his thrusts grow deeper and more powerful.

"Aahh--urhhg--ahhh," she pants, her throat growing malleable as something like blood begins flowing more freely through her carotid arteries and collecting in the lesions covering her neck and face, forming little pools of fluid, mostly clear, but cloudy with wisps of red. "Aaahhhh," she gasps, as he drives into her, and a few of the reddish upwellings spill over to trickle down her face.

Our body glistenss with droplets of red blood, the eye stammers. It smears over his chest as he slides against us, as our breasts press upon him.

The living man seizes her fiercely in his hands, gripping her hips, and thrusting into her. She feels his hard shaft strain within her, pulsing, and there is a sudden gushing of heat through her insides. Newly animated and stimulated muscles twitch and flutter against his girth, drawing his emissions inward. She quivers and jerks in his arms, holding onto him tightly, as waves of pleasure radiate through her body from that burning core where his seed has erupted into her womb. She is taking small, rapid breaths. She can't get enough air.

"My love," he whispers into her ear. His voice is different. Rougher. Older.

She looks upon him. He is withering, the eye muses. His skin grows brittle and furrowed even as we watch.

She feels aflame with vitality. There is something akin to burning oil coursing through her veins. Most especially in her loins, but also there are nodes of particular sensation smouldering up through her core, in her diaphragm, all tingling with a sense of electric connection. She feels a shiver run through her body.

Her tongue is growing moist within her mouth. Her throat wants to swallow. She does it, more than once. There is saliva flowing.

She places her lips upon the living man's newly wrinkled skin, pressing in softly. "I... remember this..." She kisses his chest. Her tongue just touches him. He moans, an old man's rattling sigh, as she moves lower. She comes to his navel and licks into it, tasting the knot of skin. The man's penis rests upon her chest, wet and warm. It slides in between her breasts. They are soft and supple, now, squeezing in around him.

"Ahhh," he groans, as she uses her hands to press the orbs together, enveloping his slick shaft in her flesh. She slides down, moving herself around his cock. She can feel him growing, larger, harder, once again, beneath her boney fingertips, between her seeping breasts.

A milky fluid leaks from his erection, dripping over our skin. He is wet with his own slickness, sliding in a trail of it along our flesh.

She opens her mouth as the man thrusts up, bumping into her chin. She turns her head down. He is thick in her hands, hard. His skin slips over the hardness underneath as she pulls it up and down. She brings her mouth to his erect cock, lays him upon her tongue. She tastes the seminal fluid flowing slowly from his narrow opening, sliding her tongue over it softly. She closes her lips upon him, wonderingly, and feels him shudder. The round head of his erection fills her mouth. It presses in upon her throat, soft but firm. She swallows instinctively, drawing it deeper. He is trembling, now; his swollen shaft throbs and pulses between her lips.

"Ohh god," he manages to cry out, voice dry and husky. "Yes, my love..."

As she swallows, and his pre-seminal fluid thickly coats her throat, heat begins to radiate from the core of her torso, percolating through her neck, her belly. It feels like bits of flesh are knitting moistly together, all over her body. Lacerations are shrinking, as scabs form and skin closes over. Even her shattered knee is pulling together, as tendons and ligaments tighten around the fragments of bone and calcium grows like coral in the gaps.

"Take it... my love..."

She hollows her newly whole cheeks with the force of her suction upon the bulbous head of his drooling cock, and looks up at him. His sskin is cracking apart, whispers the eye. It is flaking away. Desiccation creeping inward from the extremities. Fine dust sifts from his fingers as they move over our firm, supple flesh. His legs wither from the feet upward. He is growing weak, falling to the floor.

As the living man collapses, she follows him down, suckling with ever more fervor upon his aching cock, as it leaks a steady stream of cloudy pre-cum, bathing her tongue as she wriggles it against him, licking along his length. She stretches her cheek with the head of his cock, until he pops out with a sound like a bone twisting loose, and moves down to suck his testicle into her mouth. She can feel the heat in it, the teaming, boiling life. She licks and suckles on one and then the other.

"Aaghh, yes," he groans.

"Mmm," she murmurs, slurping up his urethra. Her lips close upon his shaft and she slides her tongue over the turgid crown.

"Ohhh god," he cries, tensing. His arms are quivering weakly. His face is drawn and gray. Only his cock still strains with vitality. "Take... it... Take it all..."

She clutches his girth with both hands, knitted over now with baby-smooth flesh, and sucks hard as his hips buck and jerk. His balls draw up tight, and then relax, releasing a thick stream of semen into her mouth. She feels his shaft flex strongly, once, twice. A third time.

Thick, viscous, creamy liquid fills her throat. It burns her tongue, her esophagus. She is swallowing as fast as she can, choking on it, like fire in her chest. She gasps for air around his cock, and it comes free, still spewing thick streams of pearly semen, onto her face now. It splashes across her cheek, over her lips. She is tingling where it touches her, inside and out. Her insides quiver and squirm as if shifting into action after long rest. She touches her face, smearing semen with her fingertips.

His cock, too, now shrivels before us, reports the eye. It is withering away.

"Ahhllll..." he groans, almost unintelligibly, "fooorrr eughh..."

She looks upon his stooped figure, like a supplicant before his queen. She and the eye regard him regally, bowed before her. He raises a bony hand, pawing feebly at her newly nubile thighs. She smiles down upon him, enfolding his frail fingers in soft, warm palms.

She remembers.

Their past life together fills her mind like a cloud of buzzing flies. Feelings, thoughts. Conversations, tender moments. His voice echoes through her head as the eye sings softly in its socket.

She holds his hand and he shuffles along with her as they walk out among the mounds of bound muscle, between piles of twisted slag and ancient scrap.