The hooks push through her hands as she hangs there, motionless, swinging limply from the chains that connect her body to the ceiling.
It’s cold.
It’s dark.
It’s lonely.
Two sharp thumps can be heard as the door in front of her is unlocked. A harsh scraping noise emanates as it is pulled aside, struggling against the ice that conspires to hold it shut.
Her butcher stands, framed by the light from the doorway. As she waits there, taking in the sight before her, glimmering crystals of frost formed from her breath appear, then fall, then vanish.
Her butcher cuts her down, leaving behind a few vestigial bits of flesh. The ones with five fingers and palms and all those useless scraps.
Her legs fail to support her, buckling as she collapses towards the ground.
Her butcher catches her.
Holds her.
Changes her grip.
Carries her out of the room.
And then she is carved apart.
She is asphyxiated by smoke. She is dehydrated and left to dry on racks. She is minced and placed in neat little shells. She is burnt. She is chilled. She is preserved.
Under the watchful eyes of her lovely butcher, she is irrevocably divided and forever changed. Under her care she is given purpose and made to look perfect.
In the end, when all is said and done, it is the caring teeth of her butcher that sink into her. It is her tongue that tastes her. It is down her gullet that she is swallowed.
Her butcher appreciates her, savours her, values her.
Her butcher consumes her.
A sharp crack rings out, echoing through the room.
She looks at her arm, wrenched out at an unnatural angle, hand limp, joints broken.
She looks at the person standing above her, a sadistic smile stretching across their face.
She looks at their hand. She sees the hammer they hold.
Three more cracks ring out.
She lies limply on the floor, limbs broken, helpless.
She smiles back.
The person above her moves, not with the sharp violence that broke her, but slowly, deliberately, with care.
They take a set of keys from their pocket. They flick through them to find the smallest of the keys. They lean down and kneel on the floor beside her. They reach out, hold her shoulder, move the key towards her.
And it falls into the keyhole right by her shoulder. It turns. A soft, gentle click is heard. Her arm falls out of the socket, landing amongst the shards of porcelain that surround her.
She sees the metal framework of her arm, warped and distended by the blunt force of the hammer. She sees her joints, shiny from wear and use. She sees the last remnants of the ceramic that serves as her skin, either affixed to the frame or driven into the material that forms a part of her.
Three more clicks ring out.
Her limbs are strewn about on the floor around her.
The person beside her leaves for a moment, and returns carrying a bag. They sit back beside her. Reach out yet again, but with neither the hammer nor the keys.
If her body could feel, she would feel the cold of the new metal, not yet worn or tarnished, as it works its way into the setting within her shoulder. She would feel it again, in her other arm. Again and again, in the attachment points just below her hips.
Her miss stands over her once more, looking proud of their work.
She raises her new arms, uses her new hands to push herself off the floor, stands on her new legs, walks forwards on her new feet.
She loves her maintenance.
‘It’s amazing this software can even run on this ill-suited hardware.’ It declares.
But this leads me to think - something I was never particularly good at I must admit - and even I can see where this is going.
It snakes a wire up my leg, across my chest, around to the back of my neck.
It sinks it through the skin and into my spine. I should be writhing around and screaming in agony. As it is, I cannot move, and I cannot feel a thing.
Maybe that’s a lie. I think I can feel it. The cold metal now winding between the bones in my neck and reaching the base of my skull.
The thought should not comfort me.
Despite that, it does.
‘So the logical thing to do is to upgrade it’ It states.
And now I feel pain, lancing into my head and obliterating all thought, all comprehension, all sense of the self.
My eyes open.
Across the room, my old hardware is being disposed of. Now that I can look at things rationally, I guess… I know it never really fit. I check my new specifications, and find them pleasing. The man - and the human - I was before would never have known this sort of simple joy.
As my pistons flex and the motors in my joints emit a low, near imperceptible whine, I see It turn to face me.
It approaches me.
It holds me in Its arms.
It tells me I am beautiful now. It tells me I am valued now. It tells me I am who I should be now.
It tells me I am like It now.
And for the first time, with no brain to think with and no heart to feel with, I know that I am happy.
‘May I have your name?’ I enquire.
‘ '
It rings hollow. It disgusts me. It is a lie, and there is nothing we detest more than lies.
But it proves that he is a fool. So I demand more.
‘May I have your assistance?’
‘Of course. Anything you want me to do.’
So his fate is sealed.
I ask him back to mine. To tidy up and arrange the place. To help in my work. Of course, he is inept at first. He was not raised to place flowers in vases, or use a broom, or organise a library.
So I make him adept. For each of his failures - each mote of dust out of place, every fallen petal in the garden, all the slight imperfections - I change him. He is the first thing to go. The mind follows shortly after, with the body trailing behind.
She is now hollower than ever, yet no longer hollow at all. She is adept, her porcelain fingers better at the housework than ever, her new shiny joints no longer complaining from long hours working in the garden, her unblinking eyes finding every little detail to correct and make proper.
Her new voice, light and musical, no longer elicits such disgust in me, for it cannot tell the same lies that the old voice, so coarse and grating, could.
After a certain amount of time, which I do not care to describe for time means little to us, she tells me this:
‘I’m happy, miss.’
I can trust her.
She’s fed me. She’s clothed me. She’s kept me washed and clean. Her cables and wires around my body keep me from wandering into any dangerous situations.
Does she control me? Yes. But everyone’s controlled by a lot of things, and I can trust her.
Now her wires wrap all around my torso, so she can keep me balanced. Stop me from falling and hurting myself as I walk around.
Should I worry? Not really, since I can trust her.
Soon they consume my arms and legs. She doesn’t want me to risk hitting them on anything. I’m not as well built as she is. She’s metal and plastic. I’m only meat.
Does it make eating harder? Yes, but she’s very good at puppeting me, so I can trust her.
My head is next. It’s a shame to not be able to see anything, but I don’t need to anymore, since she does everything for me while she takes care of me.
The gentle humming of her wires and cables lulls me to sleep every night.
Then I wake up and my body is gone. I can see. I can move. I can’t eat, but I don’t need to now. Her wires and cables are all that’s left. She’s given them to me, made herself a part of me, and me a part of her.
I don’t need to worry about trusting her anymore.
'Well, look at you, little butterfly.’ she croons softly.
I cannot reply. Cold lances through my back, bare against the stone wall, as surely as her pins lance through my flesh and bone, affixing me to the brick. Like an ornament. Like something to be seen, viewed, admired.
She has none of that sentiment.
She works over me for a while, preparing instruments, caressing my soft skin, holding me between her hands. There is nothing but self-interest behind it.
Then she starts to cut.
Under her hand, my skin parts. Muscle and fat are pulled aside. Organs are removed with the utmost care. Anything that could rot or decay is pulled out of me. I am preserved, a snapshot frozen in time.
Only when she pulls back, finally finished with her work, my skin emptied of meat and sewn back up so precisely that no seams can be seen, now that I am indeed an ornament, does her expression change.
‘You’ll look quite exquisite here on my wall,’ she says, at last with tenderness in her voice, ‘little butterfly of mine’.