subhuman, rated pg-13. nemuro-centric (garbage challenge). pre-series. 756 words.
(how low can you go?)
I had never been down to the basement before the day I brought the coffin. There'd never been any reason for me to go downstairs, and I am not fond of such places as a general rule anyway. It is not that I am claustrophobic or anything of the sort – what scientist would be afraid of the irrational, after all? – I just…do not like cool, dark places under the earth. Geology has never interested me much, nor do any of the other earth sciences. I am a physicist and a mathematician by nature, dealing in theoretical weavings of numbers (both real and imaginary) into webs that act as the mesentery holding the universe together.
Perhaps that is the reason why he hired me for this task. After all, it would seem peculiar to ask a grounded scientist to bring about the impossible. To bring down to his earth an upside-down castle holding eternity, a castle that spins in endless revolution like a peculiar kind of perpetual motion machine…and yet here I am. Here I am with pages of neat notes in my computer-like hand, with classrooms with blackboards for walls covered in scratchings of chalk describing the universe…but not any universe I ever would have thought to believe in. And why do I believe in it now? Why, because this school opened my eyes…pointed out the singularities and irregularities of the world that were more than just random events. Rather they are links in a chain that I can use to bind even a sick and ailing boy to this world for as long as I might wish to do so.
I want to do it for him now, after all. Only for him. There's no reason to do it for her, not now that I know she never loved me, and never will. I thought we could be a family, Tokiko, Mamiya and I…but now I have only Mamiya left to me to make this family. And I will make it. I know enough to be able to shake out the fabric of this world and twist it to my will. I know the fates now, can act as all three.
Clotho, who weaves the thread of life.
Lachesis, who measures out the thread of life.
Atropos, who cuts the thread of life.
I can do all these things, with all the threads I hold. I have the threads of a hundred boys in my hands now…one hundred and one, if you count my own.
"There's one more left upstairs, Nemuro-kun," he had said to me as I signed that contract at last, placed that ring on my finger.
"One more what?" I had asked in return, the ring feeling heavier than it should on the finger I had never thought would hold a ring, not until I had first seen Tokiko in my office.
"One more coffin."
I could still clearly picture the boy pushing what I had thought to be the last coffin, when I had walked away from the sight of Tokiko in this man's arms. "Why hasn't anyone brought it downstairs yet?"
"Because they only bring their own coffins, don't they?" He wasn't smiling, but I think all the same that he was laughing…at me, rather than with, perhaps. "We make our own coffins, and then we lie in them."
He sounded like he knew all about such matters on a deeply personal level, but it didn't matter so much then. I brought my coffin downstairs, arranged it in this basement. I didn't open it, not then…but now that I am down here, having left Mamiya asleep upstairs in amidst all the bright (bright like the sun, bright like blood!) living roses he brought me as he asked me to bring him eternity in return…
I open the coffin as I stand downstairs in this darkness now, and I feel like laughing. I don't, not only because I've had so very little practice at it. No, it's because I'm afraid that maybe once I start, I just won't stop.
There is nothing in my coffin but a candelabra and a box of matches on a bed of fine-woven silk. I will take both of them upstairs, up where it is brighter than here even in the depths of burgeoning night, and truly set about making my own coffin to sleep in. Yes, a coffin to sleep in even though once I have done this, once I have sunk this low, I am not entirely sure that I will ever sleep again.