writing_shadows

“We will find it, we will bind it, we will… no. Wait! That’s the one for ghosts or demons for an eight-demon bag! No! It shall not suffice! Where was I? Yes! We will fix it, we will fix it, we will stick it with glue, glue, glue! We will stickle it, every little bit of it…”

The sound resonated down the labyrinthine, dripping corridors. Down the sewer’s brickwork. Past the record piles and faded labels, damaged by damp despite their tender care. Beyond the small corner of blood and bile and demons and incense. Past the scuttling ones and the slime.

Carefully, Dr Bob pulled the skin over its flap, smoothing it down with an insulating tong, slicing off any excess with a scalpel. The face was perfect; a serene mask of passive surrender to death. In her day, they called her L'Inconnue de la Seine – a drowning victim fished out of Paris’ festering river. Death had brought the unknown girl an eerie, unearthly perfection; and a serene macabre celebrity she could never have attained in life… her face adorned every resuscitation doll.

“Oh, so pretty. Like little Amelia. Zhao Pingguo! Eee! Wo mei ai; wo ai shuo ni! Congming Amelia! Xie xie ni! Command us to victory!”

He prodded the nose, the soft flesh disguising the titanium exoskeleton and elaborate, carefully insulated wiring. The toys Nemo had installed, all behind the delight of a death mask, the serenity of the chest, the finishing touches of tropical underpants and a US army hat, stolen from a GI on furlough from Vietnam in 1973.

Lord Kung Fu Who Will Punch Your Ancestors In The Face, or Mr Hitty if that was too long, was ready to take to the field. And it would crush its foes like an armoured, over-zealous, axe-wielding midget on a warpath.