Chapter 50: I, Victor

Ah, this room. So pristine. So decayed. There have been many times in my short life where I wondered if I was not born in a tomb. Now I feel like I was born on a bed, like a natural infant. I've discovered how the straps on the bed work. Simple, really. Too simple in fact. Probably why it took me some time. I had to lay on the bed (a hilarious thing to see, as my arms and legs dangled far over the edges) to understand why this room appeals to me. Naturally, I cannot sleep on this bed. Not only is it far too small, I do not think it was ever a place for sleep. I'm convinced this room was used for some sort of surgery, most likely for a child, and possibly in secret. I've engaged in torture, and these are not a torturer's tools. These tools are small and fine for the precise incising and stitching of flesh. I am in continuous awe of how fine the thread and how small the needles are. In fact, I did not notice them at first. Also, I noticed the strap under the raised head of the bed while I slept on the floor. This was why I first laid on it, to see how the strap would fit. It would hold down the skull of a person small enough to fit on it comfortably. Dusty old ampules clued me into how the patient might have been kept quiet, and, hopefully, spared the pain.

I have tortured people, and I have healed them, as I have both killed and revived them; a fitting childhood for an undead composite such as myself. I am a symbol of numbers. Me unto myself, me begot myself, me within myself and wrapped around myself. I had to lay on the bed to understand. I had to lay on the floor to see. Standing suddenly, one morning, judging by the orange tinge to the window light in the drafty hall, I saw why the vent rattled. I let it for a while. It was my only company. I've run my fingers over every inch of the curtains, watching with mild interest as bits of them tear away at the slightest touch. I find myself committed to the strands that remain. What is the ocean but a collection of many drops? Water is the perfect creation. We are all dreams in the minds of Neophilus, but he only set out to make one. Sand the color of cream. I saw the storm coming while my mother talked about how Lucia was waiting for me in a new bathing suit she bought for this trip.

Lucia; she is nothing but an old memory, and one that I don't even truly have. The star in my sky was a troubled one, dark as the moon and wounded as the Sun. Lucia glowed in another time, skipped over waves along a different shore, and laid down her head at the end of another day. I've only known and loved my Eris; sweet, sickly little thing she was. I wish I had her back. Maybe that's why I love this windowless room. I don't feel so threatened by the fragments now; those little glitches from the Batch. I might stop fighting them, even the persistent, threatening ones. If that's a result of being in this room, then I really must learn its purpose. I even dreamt of Neophilus while I dozed earlier. I haven't dreamt of him since the labratorium. I slipped a piece of one of the curtains in between the concrete wall and the loosest corner of the vent, silencing the little siren.

My thoughts are coming more freely to me lately, which might not help you much in your reading, but I must be as honest as I can, and, as I said before, I shine my lantern inward now. There are no dark expanses for me to peer out into anymore. I stand on the high wall of Clarion and I see a storm of colored fire, heralding an eye of gold that is opening very slowly. I was intrigued by a small patch of shadow, and as I began to make out the lines of a crater wall within, a torrent of rock blasted it away and now roving circles of red and blue keep it constantly illuminated. So I ventured inward to find my cold dark place to sleep, alone and without Kendra. I wish they could have met. Eris would have been the mother Kendra lost, and Kendra might even have spoken again. Had I the wisdom of the abzu, I would unite them in a dream.

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