"Do you know why I'm better than you?"

"Why?" Her eyes flash with a challenging fire.

"Because I'm alive."

"Fair enough." She smiles lazily. "It seems a bit unfair, though, doesn't it? Why should I submit when this subtlest of differences was not of my choosing?"

"You have a point, perhaps, but that subtlest of differences, as you call it, effectively destroys it."

"Fine."

The doctor laughs softly as it walks off. Its legs are long and thin, like its arms and its neck. They defy the realms of possibility.

"Where are you going?"

"To take my dinner. Why? Did you want some?"

"Certainly not."

The moment it is gone, she sits up. Her hands run slowly over the skin of her neck. As disgusting as it is, Nye is a damn good practitioner. She cannot feel stitch-marks.

Her hands fall lower, slowly, inspecting. The hole hammered in with a stake is quite neatly healed, the manifold scratches against her feet gone, and the harsh burn marks in general removed. It has also somehow managed to return her hair, she notices, raising her arms back up.

A contraption in the corner of the room pulses with electricity. It would do well enough to jolt her dead heart back to life. After all, she has nothing to lose.

She walks toward it.


Keeping from screaming is something of a struggle, but she manages. Her heart races with the first beats, and she thinks she might die again, but it slows and stabilizes. She starts to breath, and blood that has been tainted almost black begins to run freely from a small cut on the inside of her thigh. She sits back down on the pallet that Nye had provided for her and watches with a detached, clinical interest.

The moment it flows red, a strap of fabric is torn from her dress. It was a pretty, presentable dress, one that was basically a long tube of fabric held to the body with a halter for the neck. Once she has tied the scrap tightly to slow the bleeding, she begins to rip the rest of her dress into grim shreds.

When this is done, and after she has knotted them tidily, she winds them about herself, neat, like the festival dancers in Japan. Slips of skin show, here and there, but modesty isn't that much of a concern. This is purely for dramatic effect, and to hide the makeshift bandage on her leg.


"I challenge you, Nye." Her voice rings out, true and clear, and Nye drops its fork to stare.

"Come now, it's nothing you haven't seen before. I challenge you."

"In what respect?"

"You have been searching for the location of a soul for months, correct? I challenge that I could find yours within the hour."

Nye grins, its handsome teeth showing. It is actually quite a nice-looking being, she notices regretfully, all silk-soft hair and glinting gold eyes. "I accept. Let me finish my food, and I will take an anesthetic. If you do not revive me six hours after I take it- yes, I will give you that much grace period- I will wake on my own. Remember, you cannot leave, or you will truly die."

"I understand. I will prepare, then."

"You may use my tools."

"Thank you."


The poison is consumed slowly, and all the fight and glimmer leaves Nye. It appears to fall asleep, but it cannot be so, for its heart stops and its breath ceases. A most effective substance.

She is tempted, now, to strip Nye of its clothing and to find out what manner of beast, precisely, it is. It would be a triumph, even if she didn't survive.

But no. She quite likes the idea of an escape.

Nye would come for her, she is quite sure, if she didn't leave a sign of her victory, and besides, the knowledge of the soul's position isn't much- she has known it all her life.

So she takes a needle and a spool of black thread, and sews, with elegant blanket stitches, the eyes and mouth of the Nye shut. She takes a nightmarishly sharp blade and removes its nose and its ears. She extracts its heart and brings it to her lips, for a moment. The blood is sour, and not quite unpleasant.

She throws it into the furnace.

Then, she writes, in precise lettering, a note to the good doctor. It expresses her thanks for its treatment and explains that she has left the answer to its question written on its own flesh, and it should understand soon enough. It adds, teasingly, that no, it is not in the brain, or the mind in any fashion.

She places a hand over its face and strengthens the thread with her will. It shall not break for a few decades, at least, she decides.


The Nye's greatest treasure is that note. It will find out what it means, someday, and then it shall seek her out and express its victory, and then there will be rejoicing, perhaps, and the Nye's life will fully be returned…

Because, even with the strings on its eyes and mouth broken, even with its hearing and smell vaguely approximated, even with a heart stolen from another, it is still missing that one thing to which every being aspires (and no, it isn't homicide).

Love.


A/N: So, in all of this, I have completely failed to address the question of Nye's gender.

Would it really make a difference, on this scale of perversion?

~Mademise Morte, November 30