vagari

Threads

Threads

It was cold, damp and dark. I was shivering for the first time in longer than I can recall even now. My body was frail and broken. Each breath I rasped drew upon my last vestiges of strength. Each exhale ebbed out my life. But still, I waited. I knew that soon my life would be returned to me. I drew strength from that knowing, a fire blazing deep within my soul. Still, I was frozen. This body had lasted me a while, but now it was broken, its force shattered. And I was so cold.

The slow drip of water reverberated off of the hard walls around me. The only sound in these forsaken corridors. The echo enveloped my senses, circling and surrounding me. My essence was lost in the perpetual drum beat of water striking water. My heart matched pace with its rhythm. I struggled to maintain consciousness as the warmth and comfort of an echoing darkness drew me on.

And then, my body gave in.

Minutes. Hours. Days, weeks, years. It could have been any or all. I will never be able to remember. I was lost, out in a void. My cradle swung gently and I was content.

§ § §

I awoke to two figures standing over me. Two shadows in this dark and musty place, one quite shorter than the other. My heartbeat quickened, leaving behind that slow death march set by the thrumming of the water. I knew the time had come. Formalities awaited.

“I am glad to have found you,” rasped the taller shadow.

“Yes, Grimm, I am too,” I replied.

A hand snaked out from beneath Grimm’s cloak, obviously a gesture intended to aid me, but I simply ignored it. This was no time to display weakness and he should have known it. Masking the pain and stiffness, I stood up, towering above both shadows. I could still feel the cold coursing through my body, but my mind was infused with a fiery red heat. It was time to forsake this broken body.

“Who here,” I began, gesturing towards the smaller shadow, “is our friend?”

Before Grimm could respond the smaller shadow stepped forward to stand directly in front of me, her back exposed to Grimm. Not the smartest decision on her part. I grinned down at the hooded shadow. A voice, a female voice, but just barely, croaked at me. As she spoke from lips hidden behind the hood, spittle flew in my direction. “Aye! I be the one.”

Nonchalantly wiping my cheek with the back of my hand, I responded, “Now, now dear. We all know exactly who you are, but formalities must be addressed first.” I smiled my most tender and loving smile, a cross between the look of an innocent child and the hungry snarl of a lion whose prey has been cornered. “Please, pull back your hood and reveal thyself to me, my child.”

I could feel her cold eyes boring into mine, burning with loathing and hatred. Naturally, this wasn’t all directed towards me, it is simply what got her here. She slowly pulled back the hood and stepped closer, revealing a face which was surely once full of beauty and laughter. Now, however, it was a mask of pockmarks and scars. In the dim light the redness of each scar stood out, faintly glowing with every ounce of this woman’s hatred. I reached a hand out toward her, tracing the scars with my finger, though never quite touching her.

“Magnificent. Such . . . experience.”

She snorted and a sneer curled about the edges of her mouth. Locking her eyes with mine again, her hands began climbing down the front of her cloak, slowly unbuttoning every latch. With a sudden flourish, she flung aside her cloak to reveal a most unique body. Naked, I saw every inch of her. One side of her body was clean and very feminine. A milky white shoulder resided about a generously shaped breast followed by a narrow, hardened waist that bled into a magnificently shaped hip and buttocks.

The other side, however, was a ruin of flesh. Her shoulder was equally scarred as her face. A spectacular scar traversed her cheek down past her collar bone and over her shoulder to end somewhere down her back. A master had created that. Below her shoulder was a dark, sunken patch of flesh where a breast had been. Across her belly and side were horizontal lacerations that I assumed were made by some sort of whip. The most ruinous part, however, was in the midst of an otherwise flawless leg. A curious circle enveloped her upper thigh, screaming red, raised and ringing concentrically around her entire leg. I stared at this leg for a few moments and marveled at the mystery it presented. All the rest of her markings were common scarring from torture, but this ring was something I’d never seen. What could have caused this? My hand encircled the scar, tracing its existence.

“He cut my leg off,” she said. “Then he fused it back together. It works, but not very well.” The woman spat on the ground and muttered a curse under her breath.

“My dear lady,” I began, lowering my head in supplication, “if you will so give yourself, fully and freely, I would gladly take this pain away from you.”

She didn’t respond. She stood utterly still. I looked into her eyes, searching, but there was as much telling in her look as that of a statue.

“Grimm, are you certain you explained everything to her? Is she aware of the cost?”

Grimm grunted. “And she seems quite happy about it.”

A smile broke across my face. “Happy?” I said in wonder. “Not the most natural, nor the most normal reaction to this situation. Her lack of fear is astonishing.”

I studied this enigma of a woman, looking over her naked, crippled body wondering what lies inside. Moments passed as I waited for her response, knowing a battle raged somewhere inside her. Giving up one’s self is not always the easiest decision. As I waited, the cold began to seep back into my body. I knew it was time to begin. I could no longer wait for her to break the silence.

I nodded to Grimm and said to the woman, “Do you commit yourself to the task that lies before you with full knowledge and acceptance of what is to come?”

“With every fiber of my being you filthy bastard,” she replied, once again spitting on the ground.

“I accept your gracious offer and give you my eternal thanks.”

She laughed a short burst, her voice cracking. “Aye, you’ll be thankful.”

With another nod towards Grimm, who then moved into position behind the woman, I placed my hands on either side of her temples and looked into her grey eyes. This woman, this abused and battered woman, stared back with an icy calm. I closed my eyes and centered myself within my body. I consciously spread myself out to the furthest reaches of my limbs, feeling every sensation. From the beat of my heart to the cold seeping through my feet to the shattered bones of my torso, I felt it all. I enveloped myself in the sensations until they snapped into place forming a singular entity lying at the center of a calm, endless nether-region. I stood there, I, this being, in a place all my own in which my purpose is all purpose. My body, my being was part of a singularity. That singularity was my purpose. And so, I struck out.

The first sensation I encountered was the warmth emanating from her presence and I was drawn to it. This finding was the easy part as we were bound to each other by the ritual. The difficult part is the transfer and final landing, in which one or both may become lost. I, however, felt no fear. I was well practiced.

As my being reached into hers, I found the multitude of pieces, the tiny threads that were “her” and gently separated them from her body. Images and emotions flickered amongst the edges of my awareness. Fragmented thoughts of her life, her love, and her pain. I paid them no heed. I dove deeper into her until I found the one thread, that which holds all parts together. Our love, our hatred, our apathy. Memories, dream and nightmare. Lives lived and long forgotten. Blood pumping through veins and arteries, lung inflated with air. Semen and menstruation alike. And, of course, the spirit beyond death. All attached to this one place, a single fiber, a mere filament that holds together our existence. Her . . . soul.

I enveloped this woman’s soul with my awareness as I did so with my own. Slowly, ever so slowly, I pulled pieces of ourselves out and moved them, smoothly sliding them into each other and then into the other body. Each piece I bundled and traded. A master playing the strings of life with all the power of a god. This was the transfer.

Within moments, I had moved the chess pieces into play. Now came the tricky part. I must play the game. I collected the last vestiges of ourselves, grasping them with invisible hands, feeling the vibrating life in them both; the coldness of my broken body and the heat of her hate. Closer I drew these last pieces together until they were but a hairs length apart. They felt each other. They knew each other, these primal forces, and they shuddered with a great energy, the energy of creation and the stars; the energy of all that is good and evil and all that lies between. And then, I fused them.

The first thing I heard was her scream. A primal scream that contained no words ever muttered by a human tongue. It had no meaning from a linguistic perspective, but I knew it well. It was the scream of someone dying, but more. Of someone experiencing the death of their soul. The body she was in was not capable of holding her together. Every part of her was now fighting for its own survival, eating away at each others energy. This was the price they paid for the transfer.

Her scream abruptly stopped. The echo reverberated down the corridors, rebounding back upon itself, sound folding into a slowly fading static of pain. Her body, my old body, fell to the floor and violently began to shake. Her back arched until her head and feet were all that touched the cold, wet stone. Her eyes flew open for one last look at the material world and then her spine shattered upon itself. Her now lifeless body slumped to the floor, her head resting in a dark pool of congealed mud.

And with that, it was my turn. As I watched her life slip away, I held onto my thread, barely containing the energy of this moment. It wanted release, it required release, and I held it at bay for as long as I could, knowing that like an orgasm, the more I resist the more pleasurable it becomes. It had been so long since my last transfer that I had forgotten just how this anticipation felt. I became totally enthralled with the strength of this transfer. It felt, somehow, bigger. As if the past fifty years I had grown larger than I was before. This baffled me, but the ecstasy of it all overpowered any hesitation. The joining must be complete. So, I let go.

To say that I loved her life wouldn’t give credit to what the word “life” means. It is full of more things than we are aware. The forces around us, inside us and in between. We cannot see them but for a time I can. Every last thought, word and deed we experience is layered with strands of vibrating color representing every force at play here. Certain moments are a conjunction of lines, a convergence of deep past and daunting future. At those times it can become too much for me to experience. There is so much going on, so much interplay of forces, that I can no longer see anything around me, just the shimmering light. And I collect that. I envelope myself and bathe in it. That is what I came for. Essence. That which makes up the soul.

So to say I lived her life is to be coy. Saying that would relegate the immensity of a transfer to a dream in which upon awakening the truth of it fades from our mind. With this, however, I retain the dream and all other dreams. I collect their energy and then push the rest away. I don’t kill it, just move it. I no longer need it and the true owner can no longer collect it, and yet, I don’t destroy it.

Within a few heartbeats of her final death, I am speeding down through her life, collecting the energy I need to continue living, and I am quickly reaching the end of this woman’s life. I see her age, love, marry and have children. All very bright, all very tasty. I am collecting enough energy that I can retain in this beaten and scarred body of hers. Compared to that last body, the scarring on this is nothing. This body has a strong, beating heart and thick, hot blood. Grimm chose well.

Sometime after soaking in her second child’s birth I can see a dark patch approaching, a nexus of negativity, which tends to represent death. In this case, her husband’s. As men strip him from his house and his family’s crying eyes and screaming mouths, the dark strings overwhelm my vision. I collect them as rapidly as possible, but I cannot clear them away. It is so dark I a almost drowned in the threads. What is going on here?, I thought. I had never before seen so many strings attached to one event. The darkness made it difficult to see. If this had been a happy occasion, I would have gladly collected the shimmering rainbows presented to me, but this was near totally darkness. And I became afraid. Never before had I been afraid while so in my own power. This was a vulnerability of mine I did not know. Fear of becoming lost in a black trace memory. It is strange to me even now, but at that moment, I was shocked into such panic that I managed to claw my way through the black strands until they began to lessen and color flashed in front of me again. Slowly, things went back to normal as strands of all colors swirled around me and the family. The color was back, but there was still many, many dark threads echoing from these moments. Something inexplicably horrifying had occurred. What little I saw could not have cause so many dark strands to appear, something bugger had occurred. Some sort of conjunction. Uncountable unseen forces had converged upon this woman and her family and wrought destruction among them, leaving them with the pain and sorrow, but surely not the blame. I looked over at the woman, the woman who had given her life so willingly, and I felt for her. I felt her pain and her sadness in a new light. In a more personal way. And that scared me even more.

Still reeling in shock, time continued on. I could see a wall of black rapidly approaching. This black wall must be her death only moments earlier in my old, broken body. What else could it have been? So, as her life went on, I continued picking at the strands, feeling the collected mass inside of me grow stronger with each moment. I kept one eye excitedly on the black wall, waiting for the final transfer, the conclusion. My other eye watched the woman’s life continue in an unscarred, unruined body, tracing a path towards the end, a time where her body would be tortured and ruined beyond recognition, a time where she would accept my offer to take her pain away.

And then, darkness. Not like before where the dark had slowly overwhelmed, but a simple, sudden darkness. And I was lost. Again. I felt no movement around me. Time was gone. Just this empty nothing. Panic struck. Again. Harder this time, though I remained composed, somewhat expecting this. So I waited, while a part of me screamed for release. What was I to do? I saw no way to move. There was no place to go. It was so utterly dark and dense I couldn’t help but think of a coffin. I was buried alive in this sea. I found myself exploring my own feelings. My fear. This transfer. I was obviously confronting something new. This transfer eclipsed all others. My only hope was to emerge on the other side and continue on. Scarred, yes, but alive again.

The dark parted. A pathway split down the middle and I slowly made my way down a path which could only be a way out. Whatever lay before me must be confronted. So, I went. I followed the path. And soon, I found this to be the greatest mistake of all my lives.

I emerged into something new and unexpected. I entered a room void of all the colorful strings of life. I was no longer in the darkness, but actually in a room, as real as could be. Too real, for this was no ordinary room, no, it was a torture chamber. Chains and hooks hanging from the rafters, blood stains cloaking the walls and floor. And I was seethed in a chair, bound hand and foot.

Shock made me a little slow to understand. I could feel time moving once again, but at the same time I felt the wrongness. Oddly, I could feel my body and it felt whole and pure. I was certain I was dreaming, having become lost in the netherworld. This was a dream or hallucination, though, really, the difference between the two is slight.

But eventually I came to my senses. I wasn’t in the netherworld. I could feel things I shouldn’t be able to during a transfer. I felt every inch of my body. My bare, cold feet. The ache at the back of my head. My chaffed wrists and ankles. And, surprisingly, my breasts. Somehow, I was actually living in a memory. Something stored within this woman’s essence.

A door opened and men entered. They began slapping and shouting at me. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I felt every blow. Time sped up and the men turned into a blur of movement. I still felt everything, but it was magnified as one hurt piled on top of another. My face seared, my flesh was cut and I only felt agony. The blurs continued to move around me, poking, prodding, burning and cutting. And all was red. I was barely able to tell the difference of a hot poker and when they cut into my cheek, drawing a line back over my shoulder. I did, however, experience most intensely the searing cold pain as they pulled back the skin, exposing the nerves to cold, damp air. Under the torrent of sensations I began to lose consciousness. My mind was becoming fragmented, not knowing or understanding what was happening.

And then time slammed to a halt. Time continued, ever so slow, but to the point that it was essentially stopped. Every heartbeat was an eternity and in those eternities I felt everything. Every cut, every bruise, every burn was a universe unto itself. So deep one could spend a millennium traversing the sensation from any of the damage done to my body. I wallowed in my misery. My soul cried out for release and I became afraid that I was stuck in the bottom level of hell. Pure, perpetual agony.

Suddenly, time righted itself. Through battered and blistered eyes I saw a man. A familiar man, though I could place him not. He approached and stood directly in front of me, leaning over to look directly in my eyes. With gazes locked, the pain disappeared. Hope flooded me. It was over. I attempted to smile, though I don’t know if it registered on my face. The man suddenly grinned, mouth turned upwards in a grimace of pleasure. And the pain flooding back in.

Fighting unconsciousness, I saw the man move over towards a table and hunch over it for a few moments. Shoulders drooping he picked up something from the table and turned back. Suddenly, he was in front of me. All I could see were his eyes, but pained screamed through my body, emanating from my lower left. A sound, a peculiar sound not unlike the paring of fish meat reached my ears and I looked down. Still staring into my eyes, the man was slowly sawing into my leg. Flesh split open revealing tender, pink meat that soon began oozing blood. I screamed. Or so I thought. Stoically, my mouth remained shut. I, however, trapped in this body I now shared, screamed for an eternity.

Each motion of the blade screeched though my being. I could feel the blade teeth pull at the bone. Vibrations shook my thigh as the teeth raked the hardened mass. And still, he stared at me. A look of pure fascination on his face. Tears streamed down my face as I heard my leg flop to the floor. The pain is indescribable. Words cannot suffice. Compared to the burns, the collapsed breast and the exposed flesh of my neck, the loss of my leg and its slow procedure out shined them all. And he knew it.

My lips parted slightly, bits of skin tearing from them. My tongue stripped itself from the roof of my mouth and one word, one excruciating syllable broke free from my cracked chords.

“Illn.”

The man’s grimace broadened. “Good,” he said. “For that, I return your leg.”

If I had any notion or pain or my tolerance for it, both were blown wide open and swept underneath by a wave of sensation so intense and alien that to this day I cannot find the right words to explain it. An eternity of sensation drenched every fiber of my being. New vistas and horizons opened within me. Any shred of consciousness was shattered and strewn out into an infinity of hellish sensation. My threshold had been breached.

§§§

The sound of my heart woke me up. The slow slam in my chest followed the pattern of a drip echoing off of walls. My limbs ached with cold stiffness.Slowly, consciously I pulled air into my lungs and opened my eyes. A dark form loomed over me, blotting out half of the worlds. A row of teeth blazoned upon my embellished pupils. Two stacks of white stone smiled down upon me and a wave of horror shook my body. I couldn’t, no, I couldn’t still be there, I thought.

“Bloody hell that scream scared me.”

Cold relief slivered up my spine, shaking my body loose of tension. Grimm. Of course. I was back. Grimm grunted and thrust a hand under my arm and gently helped me to my feet. Joints creaking I managed to stand, one arm outstretched against the slime covered wall, the other draped across Grimm’s neck.

“I knew that woman’s body was something else. All that damage and all. Never seen an uglier face.” Grimm paused, glancing at me. “She held herself well, though. Body seemed healthy enough. Fit. Walked well, even with that limp. Seemed bloody eager to come. Hrmph.”

Grimm began moving forward, half dragging me as my mind struggled to maintain awareness and control over my body to move with him. Thoughts, images and feelings randomly shot across my mind, threatening to swall my consciousness into a frenzy. Little as I could, I tried to slow the deluge and maintain some semblance of coherence.I controlled just enough to help walk me to the edge of the tunnel way, struggling mightily every time I moved my ruined, though whole, left leg.

At the edge of the tunnel was a dirt clearing rimmed by a tree line. In the pale moonlight I could just make out two hulking shadows tethered to a pine tree off to our left. My one hope was to remain awake long enough to straddle to back of one of the horses and slid back into unconsciousness so that the storm in my mind could burn itself out. I dreamed it would subside by the time I next awoke.

And so it did.

§§§

A fire was crackling. Opening my eyes to a ceiling made up of intertwining leaves and branches. Stiffly, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked across the first to the illuminated body of Grimm. A slab of white showed him grinning at me.

“How long?”

“Almost a full day,” Grimm replied. “Rode all of last night and a good part of the morning. Once the horses were ’bout through I set up camp. You,” he paused, spitting beside himself, “you were out the whole time.”

I barked a short, crisp laugh. “I feel like it, truth be told.”

I stood up and as quick as I could and stretched out my limbs. My muscles ached and the bruising between my legs told me the woman whose body I now inhabited wasn’t exactly an equestrian. I examined my hands and arms in the flickering firelight, amazed at being in a new body once again. I sat down and looked over at Grimm who had one eyebrow raised, but said nothing.

“Quiet, sturdy Grimm,” I thought. “No, this wasn’t a normal transfer,” I said out loud, answering his unspoken question. He grunted in response. “If I knew any better,” I continued, “I would have thought it a trap.”

Grimm continued to stare at me. If he was experiencing any surprised at my candor, he masked it well. I think he already had an inkling of what I was to ask of him. However, I know he had no idea about the rest of my plans. At that time, they were still a bit of a mystery even to me, having on had time to give them minimal thought. There’s no sense in dallying with Grimm, he like it straight.

“I need to ask you to carry me,” I said. He nodded and spit again. “Just until we reach Tor and then I can pass along to someone else.”

He nodded again. “And then?”

Shock must have registered on my face because Grimm spit again and hung his head slightly as he looked back at me.

Damn woman, I thought. Anyone teach you to hide your emotions?

“And then you will be going out to find some answers for me.” I raised my hand, saying “I don’t know where yet. First we need to get to Tor.” I tilted my head sideways and eyed Grimm for a moment. “I am sorry to have to do this, but I cannot stay in this body.”

This time shock did show on his face. This was perhaps the longest and easily the most open exchange we had ever had. Dammit, woman! I cursed in my head. What the hell did you do to me?

Grimm stood. The flames flickered from below, casting a haunted look to his face, as if he had been on the ground for a few days.

“I’m packed,” he stated.

“Good, then let us get this over with.”

I walked over to Grimm who look down into my eyes. For a moment, his eyes flashed what I took to be a mix of fear, hate and pity. I ad seen enough of those looks over the years. He then lowered his head and I reached up, putting my hands on each side of his head, took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Thankfully, nothing went wrong with this transfer.