How the Flesh is Filed
I can smell the stink coming off the streets tonight. Blood and rain, steam slowly rising under the blue lamplight. Ahead of me, the line of waiting bodies stretches out into darkness, heads down, hands clasped behind their backs; it extends just as far behind as it does ahead, and there exists the same on either side — endless columns of faceless slaves, trudging forward in due resignation.
The City is long owed this cleansing, and that is why we’re here, that is what we provide it with. Beyond the borders lies nothing but waste, lost time and madness. In here, within these walls, we are part of a cycle that makes sense, part of a larger construct that was built with divine intention, divine purpose, and we await our reckoning with the understanding The Forefathers filled us with.
One by one the sentries file us into vans, their faces hidden behind masks of reflective plastic, weapons slung over their shoulders. The slaughter in the streets has ended, the insurgents put down, and now we, The Willing, pile into these vehicles to atone for their sins. It is as The City decrees.
Miles before we arrive, the smell of the Temples fills the air. It is different from the blood on the streets — more compressed, more potent. It has a syrup-like presence that permeates everything, and we breathe it in, swallowing it down, knowing it will only grow stronger by the moment. No matter how pristine they keep the shining walls of these holy houses, the smell cannot be contained. It is life. It is consumption.
Upon arrival we are guided out onto the terminus, many of us witnessing it for the first time. Everywhere, between the perfect spaces dictated by the endless layout of the Temples, men and women mill slowly onward, clad in drab grey, heads down, faces blank. We swarm, herded, moving in fluid currents like wind through tall grass, draining slowly into the gaping mouths of metal Meccas.
As we separate off, shuffling in groups into the Temple narthices, there are no sounds but for the buzzing lights and the moving bodies, the laboured breathing. Neither we or any of the soldiers give voice to a single word.
Always as it should be, Always has it been, from The Fathers to The Seed.
Within the Temple the halls are shining steel—clinical in their cleanliness. Gatekeepers stand motionless along their length, clad in sterilized plastic, barely breathing. One by one we separate farther, coming to a stop outside the doors of each our own chamber, waiting for them to open. When they do, it is in perfect similitude, deathly silent, and we all step into our rooms in unison.
Inside, the door slides shut behind me, locking me into solitude. The smell is all-consuming now, so thick it seems nearly tangible, but the silence is monastic. There is privacy in death, and this The City grants us—it is an act of the highest respect, given for our own in turn.
The only source of light in the room comes from a skylight in the rounded ceiling, and directly beneath it sits the machine. It is an entity unto itself, a labyrinth of metal so luminous it seems to be generating the light on its own. It is freshly cleaned, but here the illusion betrays falters slightly—traces of matter can be seen within some of the finer filaments. It would be impossible to perfectly clean something of such intricacy.
Beside it sits a small medical table with the necessary items on top. I remove my clothing and walk over to it, under the light. My body is gaunt and white — tired flesh draped over a hunched skeleton, drained, ready. I pick up the mouth-guard and slide it in, biting down and locking it into place. As with the machine, it is newly disinfected, but cannot fully disguise the flavour of vomit and bile beneath the chlorine. I swallow the taste down, leaning forward and picking up the fresh waste bag, attaching it to my genitals and pressing the hooks into the flesh at my tailbone, making sure it is secure. Finally I put the goggles on; tempered from the finest glass, they will not fog-up or serve any smudge, but always remain clear. The eyes shall see to the end.
I turn now and face it, finally, taking it in fully for the first time. The Great Gateway. It is this we’ve heard whispers of since the days of the crib, this we’ve seen written in the eyes of our parents, and served silently to our children in turn. It is a fortress of beauty, a sleek web of stainless steel limbs, arching from floor to ceiling and swelling outward in the centre to form the shape of an egg. Sitting on a solitary base invisible to the eye and rotating almost imperceptibly gives it the appearance of weightlessness. At its top, directly under the light, the interlocking limbs converge and then bifurcate, flaring back and outward like the wings of an enormous insect.
Stepping closer I can make out the inside—the cradle at its centre, smooth and open, waiting. Above it, a skein of silken white threading winds down into thicker, translucent cables, coming apart into two main arteries, each capped with a metal snout and suspended just above the bed, their wet noses nearly touching. This was the heart of it, the resting place, fit for Any and Every Body, but none moreso than mine on this day.
The passage points the way.
I know what to do, and how.
Climbing in, I lay myself down and the machine responds in kind. In utter silence, its wings begin a slow descension over the egg, which tilts and rolls back as they close around it, sliding me inward into a newly formed shell. Somehow, inside the womb, the light is nearly blinding, but my eyes adjust, and as they do my body enters the final surrender, letting go completely and allowing the machine to lock my limbs into place. The shell begins to rotate slowly in the opposite direction of the exoskeleton, and the inner parts commence movement—sliding and intersecting, connecting and separating—as the dual heads come alive and start to purr. Clear-eyed, open, in utter repose, I stare deep into the heart of this hypnosis, The Seed of the City, and listen as it begins to click and breathe.
This is what The Fathers have written down, this is what The City has decreed, and tonight a spell shall be woven upon my body, and I will lose myself to the Filing of The Flesh.
This is how you pass between worlds.
Image: Enjoy