Bones

The living are loud, which is why it's easiest to find the dead in quiet places. There were no curtains and the dull neon glow penetrated the windows, casting long shadows over the room. Bullet holes in the tempered plastic windows let slip the roar of distant sirens. But they were not coming for me today. I knelt by the pile and bowed my head for a moment, expanding my consciousness. I reached out and took a hand. "It's okay", I whispered and it was okay so the spirit relaxed and released its tight grip upon reality.

The dead just wanted to be heard, so I knelt and I listened, perfectly still, ignoring my cramping legs and shaking arms. They told me of their lives, of their children and siblings, of the law, and of their thousand tiny revolutions. They told me of their deaths and I could hear the screams of the dying and the thud thud thud of the bullets and taste the spray of blood. I felt as my lovers hand pulled out of mine and he walked out, unwilling to hold me as I passed. I watched the cops tape the door shut and walk away. I felt the rage, white hot and demanding, and I took it as my own, as a promise. The living had told me that six had died that night but as the hours passed, I coaxed up eleven spirits. And each, in turn, passed their burdens to me and left.

All except Miri. Miri's anger was sharper than the others. More clear. I promised her I would take care of it, but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted more. She wanted her vengeance, her toll of blood. I was ready for an attack, but not one of this strength. She needed a body and mine would do, so she surged and struck, attempting to force me out of my own flesh. For a moment, I was half myself and half not. She was far stronger than I had possibly anticipated.

But not strong enough. I stood and deliberately stepped deeper into the desolate scene, breathing in deeply the scent of rot. Miri was young, perhaps 15 or 16. Her body lay behind the counter, stained with blood from her wounds, stiff fingers still clutching the stolen gun with which she had returned the pain. I knelt over her, organized my mind, and then exhaled onto her lips. Wisps of spirit passed from me to her, expelling her from me. I watched. Her fingers twitched and then she stood, creakily and shaking.

Flesh gives off a certain energy and I could feel her cleanly, as though a form of echolocation. I reached out a hand and ran it along her chest, flesh mending at my touch, torn muscles knitting together, shattered bone fragments melting together, her balance restoring. It would've been excruciating if she still had nerves. She struggled to speak, the hole in her lung complicating her breathing, and so I fixed that too, and with a ragged gasp she moaned, "Thank you".

I nodded and returned to the centre of the bar. Kneeling, I accepted the next spirit. It was a child and it was confused. It did not deserve this. I was whispering quiet comfort when Miri tugged at my shoulder. "No", I said.

"They must pay."

"Let me finish."

"They must pay now."

I cupped the child with both hands and told it that I loved it.

"Now!", hissed Miri.

The child felt her and panicked, emoting fear at me. I cradled it close and made a shushing noise.

"It deserves vengeance."

I could feel her rotting eyes boring into the back of my head. "It deserves peace."

"We must kill them."

"No", I said.

Miri growled and tried to drag me by the shoulders. But she wasn't a spirit anymore and flesh was my domain. I twisted a hand slightly and her legs buckled beneath her, body collapsing into a tangled heap. I grabbed her shoulders and dragged her a few meters away from the bodies. She stared up at me from her broken flesh, teeth bared. "You promised", she hissed.

"Let me finish. Then we can talk about it."

"Talk? What talk? You promised!"

In response, I laid a finger upon her lips and she found herself unable to move them.

I turned my back to resume the art, when she abandoned her body and leapt upon me, overwhelming my mental defences with her desperation. I struggled, stumbling against a table and sprawling over the floor. She seized my muscles and we crawled toward the door, fighting. She forced my arms forwards in shaky motions and then I fought her and dragged them backwards, bucking and squirming. We got to my feet somehow, crashing into the doorframe, and then the door itself, and then were on the street, the hot and humid night air filling my lungs. We gasped for breath and Miri paused, overwhelmed by the sensation of air and that gave me just enough of an opening to throw her out again, casting her onto the street. I watched as the trail of her spirit fled into the distance.

The child could wait. An angry spirit loose could cause far more damage. I swung a leg over my bike and the hot metal lit up under me, engines burning to life. I took to the dark streets, coat flapping in the wind behind me. Skits stirred in the saddlebag, and I mentally ran a finger down his spine to tell him that everything was fine. He didn't settle. He could smell trouble again.

Miri made it about 8 blocks before suddenly diverting left. It was obvious why. There was a group of homeless people camped there, a small fortress of broken tents and cardboard boxes gathered around a small fire. Miri touched the fire and it grew into a mountain of blue sparks. Amid the gasps and whispered wards, she slipped out of my sight.

I skidded to a stop, bike angled so the headlights illuminated the ghastly scene. An innocent man with an ugly gleam in his eyes faced me.

"Miri, this will not help you."

"They must pay!", roared the man.

I raised my hands in a placative gesture. "Vengeance will not make you feel better."

An elderly woman emerged from a tent, struggling to walk. "They killed me!"

"We must heal our wounds before we inflict more."

A man sat upright from where he was lying in a pile of blankets. "Who are you to judge us?"

"These bodies are not yours. Release them."

A child, eyes glowing bright red, screamed, "What is it to you, necromancer? You have the right to chose who lives and who dies?".

I walked forward, hand outstretched, until I was cupping the child's cheek in one hand. She was young and balding, clearly ravaged by disease. "Do you?"

Two of the possessed homeless placed hands upon my shoulders, fingers gripping with supernatural strength. "Give me my vengeance and I will let them go."

"Very well", I agreed, and then the air was calm again. Her victims slunk back to the shadows. None of them acknowledged me and I can certainly understand why. Instead they turned away, retreating back to the safety of their camp. Miri hung in the air, a presence of dread. I walked back to my bike slowly. The left saddlebag buckled open, revealing Skits, a skeletal cat, curled up and trying to nap. I nudged him aside and removed a skull, polished white and clean. I offered it to Miri and she begrudgingly accepted, slipping inside of it.

I affixed her to the front of the bike and hopped on. "May I finish first?"

Miri didn't reply, but I could feel her energy. She was spent. She was made powerful by rage, but had wiped herself out so far tonight. I gently placed one hand on the skull as I drove off into the night. The city was dark down here. The street lights needed replacing. They likely never would be. Glass and trash littered the streets. I could feel the very desperation baked into the sheetmetal walls and choking the damp air. Hopefully it would rain soon. The heat had to break soon. Dying of heat was a horrible way to go.

We didn't speak as I drove. Instead, I felt Miri gently, probing at the edges of her life. Her history was a sharp and jagged thing, bouncing from fight to fight, danger to danger. Knifes glinted, guns screamed, and there was always more blood and scars. Protest marches, bricks through windows, blasting sirens, pepper spray and water canons, the rage of being young and hopeful, the screams of the wounded and dying. When someone hurt her, she hurt them back. Tonight would be no exception, she hoped. It was a deeply familiar track to me. Painfully so. I'd seen a thousand fresh faced corpses with the same tale and it always hurt a little more. Who fought for the innocent? Who obligated the children to die for our sins?

I swerved into the parts of the town that could be considered "nice" and met traffic. Tinted windows on automatic cars hid the staring faces. I was the big bad scary necromancer, the fleshwarper, the vampire, the transient from the poor below. They were right to fear me and I stared right back through the shadowed visor of my helmet, my coat flapping behind me as I dodged between cars. Come and stop me then, cowards. Automated systems recorded my lack of licence, of id, of permission. But no would would act against me. Cops ignored my speeding weaving dance. They could smell danger in my every move. I was a challenger here and not scared of it.

I parked the bike outside 21st Precinct Police Station, placing my helmet on the seat. No need to lock it. Skull tucked under one arm, I shoved the door open and strode towards the bored officer on reception duty. He glanced up at me and boredom gave way to panic. "Hey, get outta here!"

I ignored him and glanced at Miri. "This one?"

"No", she said.

"I said get out of here, bonebitch!", the cop roared. I clicked my fingers and his muscles stopped worked. He would be fine after an hour or two.

"You should kill him", said Miri.

"No", I said, as I crossed to the other side of the desk and shoved the sack of flesh out of his chair.

"But it would be so easy!"

"I'd have to take his soul too."

"Why? Let him suffer."

"It's complicated."

I was considering explaining further when the other cops in the large room realized what I had done. "Hey!", one of them yelled.

"These?", I asked Miri.

"No.", she said. "But you should kill them anyway."

I grunted acknowledgement and ducked as a particularly trigger happy cop opened fire.

Bullets whizzed overhead. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I could feel each and every one of them, each pulsating sack of life, each of their organs and brains and blood oozing and whizzing and filling with adrenaline. It would be so easy, oh so easy, to snip their threads. I didn't. Instead, I cut their muscles one by one until finally I was the last one standing. I waited for just a moment to be sure I was alone, and then collapsed into a nearby chair, gasping for breath. "Are you okay?", asked Miri.

"Just need a moment."

"Why didn't you use your gun?"

I could feel it at my side, bulky and metal. I didn't like it. I didn't like carrying it. I didn't like that Miri knew I had it. Instead of answering her, I picked her up with one hand and limped out. I worked my own flesh as I walked, prying the two bullets that had landed out of my flesh as I walked. One in my leg, one in my shoulder. The tinkle of metal hitting the ground gave way way to the wet sound of knitting the flesh closed. I growled and spat the blood out before donning the helmet again.

We hit the highway again, the rush of the wind bring balance back to my mind. The station stank of death, full of angry spirits. It always took a lot out of me to look past that suffering. But I wouldn't have the time I needed to put them to rest. Still, the guilt drove my thoughts darker. Skits emoted concern. He could feel the way I was tiring myself out.

"What's your point?" Miri's voice was clear in my mind. It wasn't quite speaking with words. More like pointed thoughts, a series of images with a clear message.

I responded in kind. "What do you mean?"

"So what? You're enlightened cuz you don't kill people?"

"No."

"Bet it's real easy to talk big when you're alive and kicking."

"Mm."

"Come on. That was easy! You could take all of them."

"No."

"Isn't it easier to tend to the living than the dead?"

"Do you think it would work?" I snorted, mostly for my own benefit. "How exactly do you picture that going? I march into every police station in the city and shoot them all up?"

I could feel images flowing from her mind, fire and destruction. "Yes! Yes, yes, yes!"

I responded in kind, spilling my memories down through my fingers, into blood dripping from nails. It was overwhelming and intoxicating. The Bloodsysters gunned down, cops storming into bone cabal meetings, open war in the streets, two men twisting my arms to hear the snap of bones, screams muffled into my mask, the howls of the dead protruding over it all. Oh, how the dead infest the city. Oh, how they sink into the very bones, draping themselves in concrete and scrabbling for the living with claws of despair.

"But you'd win."

"At what cost?"

"Any."

"I am a single person. I am not a revolution."

"Revolution starts with a single brick."

"You're not a brick."

"You could be."

"How many more tragedies are acceptable to you?"

"You could actually do something meaningful for the first time in your miserable life, you bonebitch waste of-"

I slammed the brakes, spinning the bike sideways, rubber screeching against cracked tarmac. Without a word, I hopped off the bike, shoving the helmet off. My cheeks, already blossoming with bruises, stung in the hot night air. I set the helmet over Miri's skull, sufficient to guard her from any passers-by. Most people knew better than to mess with a gravedigger's ride, anyway. She screamed something ruder at me, but I was past listening. Instead, I stalked away from the bike, disappearing down an alley.

I knew where I was. It's a part of the city I spent a lot of time. Some good friends of mine lived near here. I was angry. Too angry. The rage was old and familiar. The imagery I'd shown Miri flashed through my head again, the parts that I feared and the parts that were true. I swam in it, letting it consume me. I remembered holding a lover as she died, whispering sweet nothing to her soul as it wrapped between my fingers and passed from existence. I remembered letting the loss drown me. I remembered the impotence, the indignity, the barely suppressed animal fury that came from being caught like a rat in a trap. The dull taste of the gag between my teeth, the feeling of my bones snapped like twigs in their rough hands, the nasty laugh. The crunch of footsteps as they walked away. That long silence. The rain on my hair, sticking my clothes to my skin. Slowly knitting myself back together. Someone's hands in my pockets. Someone's hands in my hair. Someone's hands rubbing my back.

My hands came together in a fist, thudding into the hard concrete. The sting brought me back to myself. I couldn't go to war. Not again. That stunt with the police station was stupid and rash. They'd crack down again. Not all of us used the art for violence. We make an art of death, but we never make an art of causing it. The snuffing of life is always ugly. I could handle myself. But the others would be in trouble. It wasn't worth it. Stupid. Shouldn't have tried to teach her. Should've just packed her up and sent her on her way.

It was a pathetic vengeance. Fangless and useless, signifying nothing. It's all well and good to warn them that had I been there, it would've been different. That they could barely touch me. But there is but one of me and thousands of them. They don't respond to threats lightly. They posture back. And their posturing comes with casualties.

But the thought remained. I could've been Miri. The bricks in her hands had the same rough texture as the molotov cocktails in mine.

I danced between piles of trash and corpses and broken machinery and sometimes people where people were broken machinery. The darkness of the alleys gave way to a street, restaurants surrounded by hungry shoppers. And there, right in the middle, was a graveyard. Home. I drifted closer, a dark shadow amidst the crowds. In a world of colour and contrasts, I was in the in-between. The stench of death rode me and the pretty children of money parted to let me slip between. Their gazes never rested upon me. Amidst the neon glow of signs overhead and the sounds of haggling, I pressed my palm against the gate.

I could feel the energy of the graveyard through the walls that guarded it. A moment passed and the gate failed to open for me. I studied the door. There was a cardreader on the side, an ID scanner built in. Fucking upper class and their goddamn automatic security. I studied the door, the card scanner, the necessity for an ID chip. "Bones and salt", I angrily muttered. Fuck. The dead were locked away here, banished behind walls to keep them quiet. Did they follow rites? Or did they pile them in heaps, leaving them to scream for eternity?

I turned and caught the eyes of someone close to me. He was short, roughly dressed, full of colour and life. A student, maybe. He tried to back away from my baleful gaze, but I coaxed him closer anyway. Like a pawn, he approached. A fly caught in my web.

"Open this", I ordered.

"But...", he stammered.

"Now."

With shaking hands, he bought his card to the reader and the door hissed open.

"Go."

He didn't say anything, merely leaving at a dead run.

The door slid closed after me and I took a brief moment to enjoy the solitude. It was small, but neat. Dirt, actual soil, dotted with small carved rocks. A little winding path working through them, curved to make the best use of the limited space. Hovering lights glowed gently, giving the air an unearthly blue illumination. The walls were tall, but shut out the noise of the city. Overhead, the clouds were the same as they always were. But somehow, less menacing. I could hear the dead whispering.

My feet found the path automatically. The art came easily and flew by. Spirits came to touch me, to talk to me. They wanted me to know that they existed and that they mattered. It was an easy promise to make. I would never forget any of them. I saw myself as a child tugging on my father's sleeve. I saw myself as a student, pouring over books at 2 am. I saw myself as a rebel, scaling a wall and not thinking about what my brother will say when he finds me lifeless and empty. It's okay. All these stories and more become part of my tapestry. I absorb their wisdom. I absorb their questions and add them to my own.

I had been walking in slow loops of the cobbled path for a few hours when a voice broke my reverie.

"We don't often get witches here."

"Yes", I acknowledged. "Lot of souls here."

"Indeed."

I opened my eyes and saw a familiar face. Not to me, but to those who spoke through me. The old women who weeded the beds and polished the graves and changed the lights smiled at me. Her face crinkled, wrinkles and wisdom shining equally from her dark skin.

I let the souls speak through me, my voice erupting with the voice of hundreds of smaller overlapping tones. "Thank you", we hissed.

Her smile, small and significant, grew slightly wider. "You're welcome, little ones."

"We'll miss you."

"Don't fret. I'll join you soon."

I frowned slightly. "I hope not."

She chuckled. "Ah, youth. I've made my peace. You or kin will take good care of me. I know that."

"Doesn't mean you have to rush into it."

"Heh. I always thought that your poetry proclaims death as natural."

"Natural and good are not the same thing."

"No?"

"No."

Something in her voice caught me and I glanced over to meet her eyes. "So unnatural is sometimes good?", she asked.

"I suppose."

"Mm", she grunted in response.

She watched me work for a while until the graveyard was quiet again, all the souls moved on. Finally, exhausted, I stumbled over to her bench and collapsed at her feet. Back against her knees, I sighed.

"Long night?", she chuckled again.

"Mm."

"Aren't they all? You don't take enough breaks, sweety. I can see it in your bones."

"My bones are broken. They say nothing."

"Your lips, then."

"Lips, I'll grant."

She laughed again, a beautiful happy laugh. It spoke of peace and sunlight. Her fingers, old and boney found my shoulders and gently massaged tired muscles. "Tell me about it, dearie."

"Ah, it's death business. You don't want to know."

"I've seen more than you think", she rasped. "Try me."

"I'm worried I'm not doing good enough work."

"You put all these souls to rest." She gestured with one tired hand.

"I know, I know. I just, is it really worth it if I'm not stopping more from joining them?"

"A spoonful of prevention is worth an ounce of cure."

"But what if prevention has costs?"

"Like what?"

"Ah, I'm sorry", I said. "I'm rambling again. You don't want to know."

"I do."

"It's okay. I'll come back and visit, okay?" Her grip was firm on my shoulder, almost stopping me from standing.

"Would you tell your sister?"

Something felt wrong. "Huh?"

"One of your sisters used to come here."

Something in the air. "Yeah?"

"She laid the dead to rest and told the spirits to calm."

Something in my throat. "When?"

"Centuries ago. When the city was young and the towers sprung up around the dirt."

Something in my heart. "And then?"

"And then she died here."

Something in her. "Who was she?"

"Me."

I flung myself forwards, staggering away from her. She laughed, cackling joyfully, her rotting jaw tearing free from her head, tongue lolling out. Muscles bloated with the noxious cost of death, her limbs melting into the very dirt. Her laugh, chaotic and free hissed with the menace of unfettered existence. Her eyes were long gone, merely black pits deep into her head from which shone the light of intelligence, that mighty and proud soul gleaming out at me.

"You-", I stammered. "You're..."

"Oh dearie, I'm sorry." Her voice whispered from the very air itself. "I didn't want to make your night worse. But it's just getting so hard to keep it together, you know?" She tried to raise an arm to demonstrate. Instead, it tore free, plopping against the ground with a wet thud.

"I didn't..."

"They needed someone to tend to them. And I just couldn't let go. I couldn't let go."

I stood, shaking slightly. All the lights had gone out. Her bald scalp gleamed in the reflection of a distant searchlight, her face otherwise in shadow.

"I really did want to help you with your problem."

"How did I not know? How did I not-", I trailed off.

"Sometimes locks are to keep things in, love."

Slowly, I took a step towards her, hand out. "Bodies aren't meant to go on this long."

"It's unnatural?"

"It's unnatural."

I cupped her cheek in one hand, my fingers sinking into the rotting flesh slightly. "Natural and good are not the same thing", she whispered.

I plucked her soul from her lips and cradled it in my arms. "You did good, my sister. You'll be okay."

Images echoed into my brain. Far more than normal, broadened by the pure lengthy existence of this woman. The emptiness of the village. The blaze of war. The heap of graves untended. The centuries of trudging. The growth of towers. Walking the paths and digging graves and tending the souls. The fading of the senses until even the howling of the souls was alien to her. She walked until she couldn't and then she sat until she couldn't.

"Was it wrong?", she emoted at me. It was.

"They needed someone to tend to them."

"They did", she agreed. But I could still feel her worry. "And the souls?"

"I'll tend them. I'll tend your gravesite, honoured sister. I'll protect their bones with my blood. This, I swear."

"Thank you", she said.

And then she was gone.

Her words rang in my ears as I walked away, the little graveyard locked behind me. "Natural and good are not the same thing". "A spoonful of prevention is worth an ounce of cure". She did a crime against the cycle and she did it to prevent a worse crime. Justification? The wisdom of age or the crimes of the ancestors?

I knew what I had to do. It might be a mistake. But it had to be done.

The bike was right where I left it, completely untouched by the gutter rats that darted in and out of shadows. I donned the helmet silently. Miri said nothing. Sulking? Or merely took weak? I ran a hand down the side of her head, tracing the curved bones of her jaw. With what little was left of my own dwindling strength, I bolstered hers. She didn't say anything to acknowledge that.

We took to the roads again, beginning the arduous dance of traffic. Cars whipped around us, ferrying their captive cargo to wherever it was that the living went. The exhaustion was settling into my bones now. I could feel the spirits growing more distant, the flesh becoming a foreign thing. It takes effort to maintain a form, effort to establish an identity. I sighed into my mask. Skits pressed against my soul a little. It was dull, as though he was reaching through murky water. His tiny little body shivered. I wasn't finished with dirty deeds yet. Tonight was going to be a long night.

The bar was the same as how we left it. The bodies remained untouched, both by dust and animals. The wind whistled gently through the bullet holes. Miri observed from her position held in crook of my arm. I placed her gently next to her pale and lifeless corpse, stained red with the bloody holes from her wounds.

"You were right", I said.

"About?"

"Revenge."

There was rage in the air. Miri's and my own was tapped out. But that's okay. Revolutions are sparked by single bricks. And this was an excellent brick. The event, the trauma hung in the air. It was so deep I could feel it even empty as I was. I touched it gently. And then, instead of processing it, I let it take me.

My bike had been registered by automated systems and already connected with the hit against the station. They had a procedure for wayward bonebitches.

The rage burned hot. It burned through me, pulsating with power. There were spirits left here, hiding in the cracks, dodging between rays of light and probing eyes. They traced gentle feelers down my back as I built my machines, my obscene constructions. Life has a pattern and it's a pattern marked in flesh and blood. The bones take on the form and they start to move at my command. But why my command? Why not someone else's? The body is a house for the soul and the soul can't stand for the house to be contaminated. But through force of will, through pure rage, we could overcome our weaknesses. We could become more.

The cars pulled up outside, lights flashing and alarms blaring. The witnesses vanished. Dark deeds are best left unseen.

I let the fire consume me. My soul and Miri's mingled and for a moment, we were one and the same. Every time she threw a punch and missed, my hands found her wrists to pull her along again, that little bit further. Every time I hesitated, she goaded me. Action and resolution. Hammer and anvil.

"Come out with your hands up!", they yelled. Their guns were ready for their chance to end it.

Bodies take a shape, but they could take any shape. Why be limited to one? Why not flow like liquid? The human mind could barely handle such a thing. A soul needs an orderly house so it knows where home is. It's easiest to stay when the body is intact. But what if that wasn't true? I knew the secrets of manipulation of the flesh. I knew how to crack bend and rend muscle. And now, Miri did too.

Someone kicked the door.

Miri sat upright. My perfect work, every foul act I could muster, my obscene zombie studied herself. We can't lick our wounds forever. But we can't keep starting fires. We don't need a monster.

The tableau held still for a moment, the pig standing still in the doorway, framed from behind by a searchlight. He was about to open fire. Miri's black and angry eyes met his. I smiled grimly as I sank to the floor, spent.

His muscles tore themselves apart as Miri devoured him.

We don't need a brick. We need a guardian.

In the distance, a lone figure rode a motorbike through narrow streets. The city was loud and it was easiest to find the dead in quiet places. And so, they departed for quieter place, leaving the emptiness of that space. Mourning turned to rage, that tragedy turned into fuel for the fire. And as the first drops of rain fell, washing the blood into the sewers, the abomination of flesh stood in what it had wrought and said that it was good. That such would never be repeated, for it would do whatever it needed to prevent it. It almost dared the oppressors to try again. Their blood would merely feed it. "Come and get me", it said.

In a forgotten graveyard, the rotting body of an old woman smiled one last time.