Intermission Two! Ingredients Optional
~O~
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
That's what little girls made of.
~O~
The first piece that arrived was the torso. It was slender, hollow, and moulded from a special blend of smooth bone china and white porcelain. Charlotte was glad it was the first part that arrived because the process of removing her head and reattaching it to the neck was incredibly...unpleasant.
Charlotte lay on the cold stone slab and watched the Undertaker putter about the cramped space, the blood-soaked knife and bone-saw left to soak in a bucket of water and ethanol. She wondered, not for the first time, why she wasn't dead many times over. Her neck hurt, her mind hurt; she very much wanted to be dead. Seeing that these thoughts were of no help, she focused her attention on the other occupant in the room.
The Undertaker was the strangest person she had ever met. He laughed at the oddest things, and always had a large, almost disconcerting smile on his face even when the situation arguably didn't call for it. His expression was always knowing, as though he was in on some cosmic and ongoing joke and it made Charlotte want to run away but also know what he knew. The young lady shuddered internally, recalling the way his expression hadn't changed even while he'd carved through her trachea and spinal cord. His fingernails were absurdly long and not at all conducive to sewing up bodies.
The man also talked. A lot. He held one-sided conversations with her as if she could answer him. Even if she could, Charlotte wasn't sure how to reply to any of his questions or weird quips. Sometimes she wanted to laugh when he did something ridiculous but then her father's stern face would come to mind and she would swallow her feelings like she had done all her life.
All her life...
"That's not a very happy expression~" The Undertaker's face appeared above her own and beside that, the hollow-eyed, grey-skinned visage of a young woman. Charlotte blinked up at the two faces before focusing on where she assumed the man's eyes were. "It's important to smile~" he said, waving the head the way a nanny might wave a cute teddy bear to entice a small child. "You want to die with a smile on your face, don't you~? Not like her," he turned the head towards himself and his lips turned downwards such a dramatic reversal of his usual smile that a laugh was startled out of her before she could stop herself.
The Undertaker turned back to her with something that registered as surprise to her. His smile was a little less wide but it felt slightly more genuine.
"That's better," he chuckled, tossing the head over his shoulder like a cheap prop. It crashed somewhere with a dull thunk and Charlotte wondered how he kept this place open if that was how he treated the dead bodies. She was distracted from that thought when he tapped her nose with one absurdly sharp fingernail, causing her to flinch. "The worst is over, little one. Don't worry, I'll fix you right up~"
oOo
"I don't want to be human."
The voice that came from her scarred throat was quiet and raspy, the sort of hissy sibilance that would not sound out of place from a snake. Charlotte touched the strip of bandages that looped around her neck, hiding the worst of the magenta bruises. She ran the fingers of her newly attached arm over the fabric, feeling the uneven texture beneath.
The Undertaker looked up from what he was doing and cocked his head at her. At the moment Charlotte was only head and an upper body. Arms were complicated, what with the numerous joints and screws, so he had only gotten round to attaching one.
The mortician spat out the needles in his mouth and regarded her curiously. "Why not?" He asked her.
Charlotte silently rotated her fingers, testing the limits of the joints. Sometimes she imagined that she could feel the way they bent backwards, the phantom pain of knowing her body wasn't supposed to be able to do that.
"Humans are awful," she said slowly. "And weak," she continued. "We claim to be governed by laws and legalities but half of those make no sense and the other half we ignore when it suits us. We treat differences with suspicion and embrace uniformity as though it will somehow keep us safe from some unseen monster. No matter how much we claim to be free-thinkers, we're all sheep to one degree or another. I don't want to be a sheep."
The Undertaker hummed again, and then the hum became a low chuckle. "How interesting~!" He laughed, making his way over to her. He tapped her nose and this close she could see that he had bright green eyes.
He regarded her with that poison green and sulphur-yellow gaze. "Shall we continue the experiment~?"
oOo
"Four arms seems rather excessive," Charlotte commented as she watched Undertaker consult a paper in one hand. From what she could see it was filled with schematics similar to the sort of scientific illustrations she'd seen in medical journals, except blood and organs had been replaced by screws and clockwork cogs. Resting on the coffin behind him were three arms, one of which was actually necessary. Charlotte gestured to her empty arm socket. "You should focus on the arm I actually need."
Undertaker hummed to himself, turning the paper this way and that to read the tiny handwriting. "Still, you should have the option, little one~!"
"Yes but can I have two arms first?" Charlotte huffed and swung a newly attached leg. Her body was taking form; she now had a torso, an abdomen, hips, and two limbs. Her neck still hurt when she talked too much or for too long but the scarring had gone down quite a lot. The skin would never stop looking raw and ruined though but Undertaker had upgraded her from corpse-linen to a bright yellow ribbon that had been left on one of the bodies.
After an extra moment of scanning through the paper Undertaker tossed the manual over his shoulder with a shrug. "Fair enough. Where's my scalpel?"
"Try your sleeve." Charlotte leaned to the side to avoid the flying bone-saw, a knife, six hypodermic needles, a human skull with some viscera trailing off it, and a cookie. "The other sleeve."
"Ohhh, here it is~!" He held up a wickedly sharp scalpel with triumphant glee. "What colour should we paint your nails once we're done~?" He mused as he approached the empty arm socket.
Charlotte hummed thoughtfully. "Black? Or maybe pink..."
"How about the sombre blue of a frostbitten cadaver~?"
"...an interesting suggestion! We'll jot that down! Don't stab me in the neck!"
oOo
"So...how long do you think he's been dead?"
"I can't be certain~," Undertaker hummed as he leaned over the body with a thoughtful frown. It was less a body and more several strips of skin connected in the vague shape of a human with a shrunken skull attached at one end. He held up a knife. "Do you want to stab him and see what comes out~?"
"Do I!"
"Um-"
The two morticians looked up at the police officer. He stood in front of them, looking nervous but with an irritating expression of steadfastness that was quite rare to see on London's constabulary and was thus much less irritating than their usual impatience. This one had auburn brown hair, a small moustache, and an even smaller beard.
Charlotte smiled at him and waved. She was still getting used her new body and sometimes forgot that human fingers couldn't rotate 360 degrees. "Yes?" She inquired.
Judging by the uneasy way he regarded her she hadn't quite succeeded. Of course he might have also been confused by the fact that she was wearing one of the Undertaker's robes – cut to fit so she wouldn't trip over the long hem – or by her presence in general. Whatever his reason was, he soldiered on bravely. "It's best to treat the dead with respect don't you think?"
The two morticians stared blankly at him, then they looked at each other, and then back at him. "Listen, Chamberlain-"
"Abberline."
"Unimportant," Charlotte held up a single finger that shut him up. "Listen, people die, and then they disappear and go off wherever souls go. This," she lifted one stiff purple arm and let it smack back onto the table with a wet thud, "is just a sack of wet, decomposing meat and rapidly congealing blood! It doesn't really matter anymore! Right? Am I right?" she looked at the Undertaker who was giggling into his sleeve. Charlotte nodded with satisfaction and turned back to the officer with a pleased smile. "I'm right."
Abberline's face was twisted in disgust but he tossed down a handful of coins, enough to pay for a perfunctory autopsy and burial, and stormed out the door muttering under his breath. "Come again soon~!" Charlotte trilled after him and that statement seemed to tip the Undertaker over the edge. He burst into cackles loud enough to shake building. The blonde shook her head with a small smile. "It was not that funny."
"On the contrary, Lottie~" he picked her up under her arms and held her aloft, "I think you have a charming sense of humour~."
"I'd be flattered papa but your sense of humour mostly relies on depression and dead people so I'm not sure how to take that."
"Take it as a compliment, Lottie-dearest~" Undertaker chuckled and set her down on his desk. Charlotte blinked at him, a fully formed being carved from soil and bone and quickened with the remains of a soul that had refused to be severed. The reaper laughed to himself and tapped his new daughter on the nose. "I believe you'll go quite far, my dear."