The Forge and Me

She tried, at the end of everything, to open her eyes and feel the beating of love inside her. She scavenged memories, raking with her bare hands through the oil and muck. Like greyscale portraits; her father (step), her sister and the moulded likeness of Jesus Christ hanging- bearing a limp, feral gaze, porcelain blood draining from his extremities. Ink blotched depictions of a hooded child wandering a lonely backstreet in Georgian. Rain-painted tears falling across a wet red smile. The twinkle of pearls in the night time followed by the ejection of a wind-swept kiss.

                She returned as close as her mind would allow her. For a moment, she felt the twist of the warm wind, the ethereal kiss of a low hanging sun peeking over the tip of a blue northern sea. The geometric splashing of colour from the stained glass of church, she’s hung over on the pew bathed in the benevolent wails of the church choir.

                She felt it all, for just a moment.

                Then, she felt the detachment of her right leg from its torso.

                First came the heat rising over the pain. The heat of her recently released blood swarming across her bare flesh. Deep red beat her senses, her eyes were screened with pulsing red like she was trapped behind the stained-glass depiction of Jesus’ execution. The crunch  of the bone was sending volts of pain up her lower body now, her brain was flashing signals. She was flapping her right leg to no success. It was a jiggling heap on the floor. A slab of dough splat along the floor. Jets of blood perused the air before joining in deepening puddles across the stained bedsheet wrap on the floor.

                ‘Now,’ began Candice, or as Felicity was to know her- Madam Kroll. ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ maybe she continued to say ‘come on’ to hurry Felicity to the forge. Maybe she said it as encouragement to stay alive. Come on, stay focused, keep breathing, you don’t need all that blood anyway. Or, come on, pull yourself together. You know that the pain was nothing compared to what comes next. Kroll grabbed Felicity’s right hand, the one which had kept its digits, and pulled her. Tubes and fabrics scraped along the floor, a slug’s trail of molten blood smeared along the bedsheet wrapped floorboards. Like an oil spill, tendrils of red bled and expanded along the carpet. Tangles of bone wrapped into the guzzling stump of Felicity’s thigh held by rivets of nerves and arteries. Muscle was scooping like a pendulum along the sheets, blotting its oils. She rolled sideways and was dragged along her xylophonic spine, it rapped a tune across the floor. Ba-dum ba-dum, ba-dum ba-dum. She heard it in the numbing moments prior to her screams.

                ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ demanded Kroll. Or was it a question? Come on, please. Would you do me a favour and shift to the gaping mouth of the furnace, please would you breath slowly and beat your heart carefully. Please, come on, survive. Come on, come on.

                No. This wasn’t a question. Kroll was guiding her jittering, limp body like a slab of meat to the oven. Quickly, while it was still fresh. Carefully, so not to bruise. You’re already bruised. You’re black, blue and the rainbow in between. Kroll wants you hurt, Kroll wants you scarred. And make no mistake of this: you will be sarred.

                Then, another voice. Low, sombre and familiar. ‘How did you get here?’

                The sound was elevated, hovering above her. lingering at the back of her mind like an angel on her shoulder. What do you mean? She asked the voice. Who…?

                Madam Kroll was scraping through a pile of loose metal equipment, the sounds almost drowned his voice from her fading mind’s ear. The funace boiled the moisture in the air. Felicity panted brief, charred breaths that stung the tract of her thoat and stung the tunnel of her nose. The furnace was small, steel and rusting at the lip. Below was a porcelain mantelpiece, like a horrific fireplace for family portraits and birthday cards. The pipes ran all the way up the celing. Caps and scrags of metal tossed across the floor like leaves travelling an autumn breeze.

 ‘I know how you got here. I just want to hear it from you. We both know that the road here was far wider and longer than you care to admit to yourself. Now’s the time to let go.’

                You want me to let go?

                ‘I want you to tell me how you got here. Then you can let go.’

                The boiling wheeze of metal in the flame of the Forge masked her own whimpers for just a moment, but she overshadowed it with a deadening scream. The tethered handles of a skipping rope fell from her mouths grip, her teeth had flattened into her gums, it seemed.

                We both know how I got here.

                ‘You can’t admit it. you can’t say it because if you do it becomes real.’

                I don’t want it to become real.

                ‘Come on, come on my little hummingbird, let’s get this all closed up.’ This wasn’t a question. The wound would be closed up at Madam Kroll’s tyrannical will. She rumbled a metal rod by its handle and pulled from the flame, like a long handled spatula, released from its fiery coffin, she held the flattened end close by Felicity’s fresh stump. Her screams were tiring now, her thoughts were tiring. Her sight, hearing and smelling, all of them were rejecting her. Give in, they said.

                ‘Come on,’ Kroll said, reaching for the skipping rope and bringing it up gracefully to Felicity’s soaked red wince. She took it in her incisor’s grip. ‘It’ll all be over soon, my darling.’ This was not a question. But what lengths did it cover? Was it all to be over soon? Was Felicity to be over, soon?

                Radio silence was a word of great familiarity to Felicity. She was the radio. The voice, the procurer of anecdotes and lessons. Talk the Talk. Momma wants to hear a show outta you, little darling. Bring the whole f*****g house down. They will know Felicity Jane Dahmer, the voice, the star, the face and the name. They wanna hear a show outta you, so you tell it like the word of God and do me proud, little darling. Put on a show, before you--