Flesh Failure Read Free Page A

easier to tear and chew.
    Smeared with bird blood, I had to make my way back to the creek. This time, the forest was still. No one whistled or cawed while I washed my meal from my mouth.
    It filled my stomach and this time, I drank but a handful of water and was able to keep it down.
    I slowly returned to the woods and found a large tree to sit under. There were so many fallen leaves around that I realized that I could gather them up to make myself a blanket.
    It was painstaking work that took the rest of the day to scoop up the leaves. Although I was more flexible than before, I still wasn’t performing at my peak.
    The flashes of light that permeated my memories may have been electricity. There was some in parts of London these days. A memory of me reading by one of the new lights came into focus briefly. It was almost like I was looking at a photograph. A young girl with hair wound up into a bun, fashionably dressed in a rose-coloured brocade dress with burgundy bodice and burgundy flowers woven into her hair.
    I was looking at a book of medicine; sketch drawings of human anatomy making me feel shameful yet awed at the same time. Drawings of organs such as the heart and the stomach and the fallopian tubes held me with queasy fascination.
    The memory was gone and I stared at the trees before me. What happened to me?
    Again, I looked at my arms and studied the stitches. Yellow pus oozed from the puncture marks where the thread was pushed through my flesh.
    The needle pushing and pulling, the agony of the thread pulling through my face. My head seemed on the verge of splitting right open with the throbbing pain that pressed against my skull.
    â€œShe’s flinching,” a male voice said.
    â€œNonsense, Dr. Rueben. She’s dead. I’ve not animated her yet.”
    â€œHer brain is in there now, perhaps memory twitches.”
    â€œPerhaps. I’m almost finished anyway.”
    â€œI could swear I saw her hand clench.”
    â€œNo. She’s dead.”
    Another memory and powerful anger suddenly filled me. It was the first raw emotion I had experienced to this extreme since I woke.
    My mind replayed an instance. I was fighting; pushing and screaming as I fought against a solid, shorter-than-me man. He was faceless in my reverie but I saw him fall back as I leaped upon him. I had punched him, then grabbed him by the throat and knocked his head against the floor. The sound was loud, each thump echoing through my bones in my flash of memory.
    I jerked awake and saw the buck staring at me from several trees away. I looked over at him and he continued to stare at me.
    He walked away.
    Exhaustion from my bath overwhelmed me as I gathered up the leaves around me. They did help somewhat to keep me warm. They also stuck to my weeping wounds but that couldn’t be helped.
    I slept deeply, nightmares dancing in and out of my mind.
    It was cold in the hole. Shovelful after shovelful of dirt scattered on top of me. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I wanted to climb out and throttle whoever was throwing the dirt on me but I couldn’t move.
    â€œWe have to hurry,” a male voice said.
    â€œI am. Help me,” he urged.
    The dirt covered me more rapidly and though they bickered under their breath, I soon could hear them no more.
    Spinning from dream to dream, the white light, the voices echoing, “She’s dead,” sudden painful jolts through my body accompanied by excruciating pain.
    â€œYou knew her.”
    â€œShe was brilliant, a scientist before her time.”
    â€œHow did you know her?”
    â€œShe was to be my wife.”
    Another dream, another layer peeling back the life of a privileged child wearing fancy frocks on hobby ponies. A child sheltered from the ravaging poor pocket of London, who had private governesses all of her life. Bright lights and white lace decorated the idea of the child who wanted to read and seemingly was encouraged.
    Sweat poured down my