Bones (Part One)
Written by RatMist.
She remembered when the blood used to entice her. Call her adrenaline from her already taxed system and gleefully pound while the scream had already built behind her throat. Her sense of smell was acute, and her anger needed almost no coaxing to come forth.
But for now, the girl sat and polished the bone quietly. She sat comfortably on the cool concrete basement floor, content.
Only the memories could stir her now. Tonight, her own rage was bottled nicely inside her bones. Bones in a pile on the floor, those still inside her body, those trapped between the floor and her inner body...her lifeforce trapped in the bones, death trapped in the pile...pain everywhere.
Wipe the blood, clean the jagged ends. Be careful not to touch the sharp crags which slid down to reveal the bone's marrow. Use kneecap scraper to sharpen...
The marrow of the rib was still pulsing with life without its attachment to the rest of Sarah's body. 'Nice metaphor,' she thought. But she had lost interest long ago. Her thoughts were surprisingly clear of angst, hatred, even simple negativity tonight.
Carefully shave the ends down, use complete strokes and not short strikes. Otherwise the bone would whittle and snap. Can't have that...
She caressed her new boneblade lovingly. Almost proudly...almost. 'Wolverine has his pigstickers; I have everything else,' she thought smugly.
She studied her boneblade carefully, looking for any dull edges along the ridge, then placed it atop the small pile growing at her bare feet. She picked at her toes, pulling the small obtrusions out of the crevices underlying her toenails. Grooming. Ripped the bits along her fingernails as well. Grooming. She wiped the blood from the small jagged cuts she left behind in her dusky pink skin using the same towel used for the raw bones. The towel was brown with old stains, red with new ones. Soiled with life, soiled with death. Her Special Maxi-Pad, she knicknamed it. She snickered.
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"Need t' get this washed fer next week," she said casually to Storm. The Bright Lady was doing laundry...and with the few washing machines, handwashing sink, and such facilities taken, Marrow had taken her chance a bit of fun. "Don't worry 'bout the stains, just make it clean."
"Why don't you throw it away, Marrow?" Storm did not use her name, Sarah. She gingerly took the scrap of cloth by a forefinger and a thumb; she was not looking for a fight. The cloth had once been white; it was brown and caked with bits of dried blood.
Marrow's face got nasty with a smirk. "It's special. My rag for when I'm on the rag. My Special Maxi, get it?" She winked at the Bright Lady, the intense glare in her eyes daring for a fight. 'Throw it on the floor, come on Bitch Bright Lady, throw it on the floor...'
Ororo's face blanched and turned spectacular shades of green and red, barely detectable under her perfectly clear, chocolate brown skin. Her lips tightened and the room turned cold suddenly. But she threw it in with the rest of her handwashables in the large sink on the side of the room.
Marrow smirked again, turned on the calcified ball of her foot and practically skipped out of the laundry room. The sound of rolling thunder bit at her back, but did not make her jump in the least.
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Sarah shifted nonchalantly on the floor and ripped her next blade from her left forearm, taking care to pull at a straight angle. She had learned a long time ago not to rip her bones in such a manner that would cause more damage to herself than necessary. Healing factor or no, it was important to make best use of her bones in the least painful, least vulnerable, way. Oh the things one learns when one is thirteen...
She cleaned her raw fibula bone, searching for possible weak spots in the fossilized calcium. She found none. She held the bone up to her nose, carefully smelling for signs of overipe calcium, or even worse, decay. She might have waited too long to pull it?.....no. It was fine. Perfect. Harsh. Hers.
She pulled her sling of oil from her stash beneath the beloved Blanket. Carefully oiled the bone. And with a small smile, began...
Using her teeth, she bit hard into the top and bottom of the fibula, nipping it easily. Used her frontal teeth to sand down the top, ignoring the coppery taste of blood from the bone and mouth. The marrow flowed easily: blood, water, and the smell of something older than herself. Life, in all its filth. She smiled again, then gently cleaned the bone again. It was an imperfect cylinder now, slightly askew in the way of all fibula bones, eerie in the slight light of the basement. Bending, like a reed.
Sarah knew how unbreakable some of her bones could be, remembered twisting herself into her enemies, bathing her boneblades in new, upworlder blood. Giving them new life, giving the trapped spirit inside them a new home...STOP! She couldn't use Rage right now...she needed Calm. She settled down first, eyes narrowing in adrenaline. Then began again.
Taking the rib-blade, she began to carve the fibula. Began to carve the eerie roses entwined with images of the filth of the Morlock Tunnels. The wings of a faceless angel adorned both sides of the bone, wings once imprisoned by metal now encased by Sarah herself. She allowed the small bunch of dandelions one of the younger ones had found Upworld to appear next to a syringe. She hummed to herself.
She paused to resharpen the rib-blade. Eyed the new edge critically, gauging its strengths and weaknesses. She dipped the tip in a bit of oil, then began again.
A rat found itself staring at the beholder through its pupiless eyes, its mouth a grimace as its tail began to wind about the bottom of the bone....Images of an orb, perhaps for the Pretty Pretties the Sun, but for the Morlocks a fantasy locked forever in their minds. An imagined dream, carved into their hearts, their bones. A broken hand, followed by a broken arm, disjointed elbow, eventually a screaming face. A crumpled body beneath the Angel.
Graveseeker had been seven years old...for a frightened six-year-old, though, he had been a mentor. He had tried to teach Sarah how to find the graves that held rich stuff, jewels and valuables, how to pinpoint the ones with caches that could be used to feed the Morlocks for a few days. Sometimes even a week. No one knew how he knew...he just did it. Sarah didn't know who had killed him that awful night...she only knew he just died. Things were simpler when she was six. Life and death, in an endless cycle.
The Dreams of that horrible night still haunted her....that's when she had begun to write them down, in her own, savage way. She would never forget, she vowed. She would never forget her home, her wretched roots such as they were.
She had begun the Records of her home, decimated...her family and friends, raped and murdered. And on every bone she had carved, a pair of mysterious dark eyes always seemed to somehow find a place on the landscape. She privately remembers that the eyes had bled tears as a pair of rough arms had held her painfully close, sickly warm air racing by her nose as someone raced to take her away...
The bone was complete. Even the dark eyes were there. More rats had found their ways onto the carnage in the bone record....a small one was delicately nibbling at one of Sweetbreath's roman noses. Sweetbreath had been the only Morlock that had ever, ever smelled, well....sweet. She had been a favorite of the Morlocks, the only one that was welcome no matter where she went among the inhabitants of New York City's Nasty Secret. Callisto had once said she was a "breath of sweet air" in the sewage smells. Sarah remembered how Sweetbreath had reeked like rotting lilies when she had died, impaled on a harpoon. Not a pretty way to go, for a girl of barely fourteen.
Sarah abruptly stood up, whether in reaction to the memory or not she did not care. She gingerly stretched her cramped muscles. Bounced up and down a few times on her feet to get the blood circulating down there again. She walked to the edge of the basement, the only corner completely covered with darkness even when the Pretty Pretties threw open the door and came to visit her in her basement. Another pile of bones was set there, an eerie remembrance of an incident no one wanted to remember. A tribute to the people only she remembered by name now. She didn't want to remember that night, but this was the only way she knew to stop the nightmares....even the exhaustion of savage battle had not waylaid them.
Perhaps it was her dead ones calling to her from beyond the grave....needing to be remembered by one of the last of their kind. She wore an X now, and her bones screamed at her every time in the field. The X that had not helped those she knew now it was sworn to protect. Her boneblades had Screamed at her betrayal to her people, the Morlocks. Her True Family, bound by desperation, not ideals. Hunger, not justice. Hatred, not peace. She fought the feelings of shame with anger and hate. Even Wolverine at his worse could not match her intense hatred of herself.
She gently placed the beautifully carved fibula in its place in the skeleton pile. She studied her skeleton, pleased to see that both arms were now completed. Ribs had been done nearly a year ago, around this time as well. The leg bones had been finished six months ago, but finding the excuses for the Healer had not been easy. Despite the pain of ripping the bones, Sarah knew these were the easiest to regenerate and pull. She knew they would cause the easiest to heal wounds, such as they were. And she also knew that eventually, she would have to have days to recover from simply pulling the more difficult bones, healing factor or not. One glance at the incomplete skeleton reminded her that she needed many, many more bones to complete her task. It would be a few more years before she could lay her Morlock bones into the ground with her brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers. All of them, laying to rest together....perhaps then she would have peace. Perhaps then, X and Morlock alike, could have peace.
She did not need to glance at her left forearm to know it had already healed as she walked away into the shadows.
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Continued in Part Two.