Work Text:
Mud streaked the shovel and rain streaked the skin.
You must dig. you must find the thing they swear is buried here.
The body. The proof that you were once a living thing in a body of your own.
What you stole, what you made your own. Could it ever be yours? What would be the cost? The already slipping sanity you think.
The name, the filthy looks you get from people tell you they think you an imposter but you are not pretending. You wear a face but not theirs either.
You must dig.
You want to find the length of silver and stain of bone. You need proof that once you really were here. That these memories of yours are not false.
Are you that one either though? Really?
He died and was taken apart, not the way you remembered but quietly. A Chip in a moldering body that some freak locked away to keep you like a doll, like a keepsake.
You vomit up the tequila you drank at that bar in the morgue. How funny. Someone in this city had a sense of humor after all.
The sky keeps pouring and your skin begins to itch unbearably. The acid is worse even than you used to be. Eating things away. In the city there are places to shelter, to hide. Out here these is little and you are too busy digging. Let the acid eat away this layer of skin and reveal the you underneath. If that you is ruined muscle so let it be. You always were the one ruining the best things, all those second chances.
The mud walls collapse and you are pinned but not buried but you are buried here too. Gods you don’t believe, can’t help you and you don’t dare to pray but you think of them in the moment of numbing pressure. Of those buddhist monks and the horrors committed on their flesh. You had liked them despite the way you acted, they had said you mattered. You liked them the way you liked everything, with fury and disgust.
You haul yourself from the hole and on to the concrete slab, pock marked from acid and cracked from time. Your glasses protect your eyes from the rain as you lay there and soak in acid. Why are you doing this? What will it prove if the body you used to belong to is buried here? Will you leave this one here too? Put the heavy iron at your hip in your mouth and pull the trigger?