Ch. 3: The Shape of Severance

Severance—
from life and death.
Severance—
from memory.
From flesh.
From purpose.
This is fateful severance.

Those golden arches above,
light reflecting off the ocean surface.
Empty bells screaming,
faces without meaning—
they all flash by.

The fabric of space—
mangled beyond comprehension.
Beyond comprehension...
her eyes,
her porcelain skin.

But without gaze,
she asks with such curiosity.
She teaches me—
not through righteousness,
but through the kindness
of her strange, clockwork heart.
It’s instant, unworded, effortless.

It bubbles–
It fleshes out—
molds, shapes, breathes.
Masquerading as my own voice:
“Where am I?”

A resemblance of mankind’s ache,
echoing beyond the folds of time—
I am one with my kin.
Fathered by this temporal slippage,
Sun. Crescent. Eclipse.
A veil between future and past opens–
I am lost,
Drowning in forests of hours, minutes, even seconds–
Unknown to date.
Unknown to time.

Severance.

Suddenly, the assemblance of light–
Rippling across time like the sea–
Creating vast shapes, figments, and definition.
Sharpening across each turn,
Simmering into a mistaken afterlife.
Surreal heartbeats bleed across the starry night,
As if existence took a breath–
Pushing and pulling that artificiality out of me.
Stretching me thin–
A temporal waterspout–
And I’m falling back in time.

— ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ —

The soft cold breeze smoothly brushes against my nose,
A warm film feathers onto my skin.
A memory long forgotten—lost beneath symbiotic LEDs.

Then,
Caressing my face–
Soft feminine hands–
Cold. Lifeless. But hides in human warmth.
It invites the lids covering my eyes to peel back,
Golden beams glisten across the clouds into my eyes,
It hurts.
It bleeds.
It’s real.

Each ray holds a sense of clarity so long forgotten–
Burning my layer of skin.
Asking–
If I’d ever wake up.

The birds squeak across the azure horizon,
Glistening lapis skies.

I’m grounded in a time–
Lost–
Anchored in a clarity of ignorance.
Anchored in a place I’m not supposed to be.

On this white wooden bench.

— ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ —

Was it when
that profane beauty cradled me—
her cold, dead fingers sliding into my wired veins,
tugging gently at my synthetic insides,
swirling through my counterfeit guts?

My head rises,
The sound of gears shifting to position—
Ruins the delicate silence.
But—

She’s knitting—sewing—my crevice back together,
Stitching each burn mark.
Replacing the metal as new.
A sort of maternal kindness—
Nurturing my baby doll skin.
She waves her pin through the wind,
Threads appear out of golden rays of true sunlight—
Then they burrow into my flesh,
Mass becoming skin.

In her red dress:
Brushing back each burnt mark:
Scabs of revelation:
It’s painful but so relieving—
It’s all I know:
My only sense of touch.
A terrible animosity.

A white dove above choirs,
The flowers around us brush against my metal body.

Beneath her black embroidered cuffs,
She pulls out a silver mirror—
Dangling—
Lifted up by a simple chain.

Her porcelain joints synchronize and move—
Pulling locked appendages.
Then, clinging onto the mirror with a chained grip:
The sun reflects across it,
The flowers reflect,
I reflect.

— ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ —

Reflected across is a middle-aged man,
So distant yet close—
Like a longing memory.
It mocks reality because—
I touch my face in confirmation—
I feel the bruising, each burnt blemish,
It’s not real.

The mirror glistens.

Suddenly,
In the background of the mirror—
A family, running around, lively,
A golden retriever playing fetch—
Like looking back on a memory.
It makes me smile.

I start weeping.
My silver hand covers my mouth—
As if to not reject the humanity—
To not become animalistic.
The two kids are working on a golden farm,
Taking care of cattle,
Playing with a dog.
And in the distance,
Her smile.
And a man.
They both kiss in the soft golden charm,
Of the hay.
Of the wheat crops.
Of that sun.

A high-pitched ring pierces the scene,
The dog pauses—ears twitching.
The wheat shudders.
Then—
A crack.

It splits down the mirror’s center,
like lightning across glass.
Not loud. Not sudden.
But irrevocable.

Suddenly—
Two hands clamp onto my metal arm.
The vibrations—faint but undeniable—travel up my frame.
It isn’t pain,
but something worse:
Recognition.

The breeze doesn’t carry calm,
it shudders.
The pressure in the air distorts,
like a glitch in reality’s heartbeat.

I look down.
He is not trembling—
he is vibrating,
like something misaligned with time.

“Hey—Hey, Do you know where I am?”
His voice scrapes out as if pulled through rusted wire.
Then—
a laugh,
wet and stuttered,
as though he’s coughing up a memory.

It’s wrong.
The sound of it doesn’t belong to this moment.
Not laughter—
a simulation of it.
A playback of something long buried.

He tears his hands off me
and shoves them into his eyes—
a grotesque mimic of grief.
Metal fingers grind against sockets that don’t bleed.
Not anymore.

His shell matches mine.
A coffin pretending to be a body.

“Look—look,
I’m a human too!”

He claws beneath the armor,
rips out a chunk of shoulder plating—
lets it clatter to the ground like an offering.
Then stumbles closer, limbs twitching in staccato.

He reeks of something that isn’t decay,
but erasure.

“I saw you—
before your flesh became burnt—
you ran into me!
I even saw you aflame.”
His voice skips, distorts.
“Oh, that beautiful dream I had—”
Then he lunges,
hands around my throat.
His grip is not desperate.
It’s deliberate.

“I want it back—
Oh, I want it—
But the thing is…”

He releases.
Hands to his temples.
A theatre of madness.
“I don’t know—”

“I can’t remember—
You have to help me.
See?
I don’t know where I am.
Who I am.”

Then silence.

He stares.
At the doll.
Not me.

Something clenches in his jaw,
and he spits, mechanical and cracked:

“The metamorphosis.
It worked?
Yes! Yes, I know what you are…”

His head tilts.
Too slow. Too wide.
As if a marionette had lost its strings.
He chuckles.

“Oh, it’s so beautiful.
Your skin.
Your gaze.
Your existence.
Grace incarnate…
How it could’ve been mine.”

He lifts his foot—
and crushes the flowers beneath it.
They do not crunch—
they scream.

Each step fractures stillness.
Tempo rises.
Heartbeat spikes.
The air thickens.

A stutter in time.
A blink caught mid-frame.

My chest.
My circuits.
Everything tightens.

Something old—
not memory,
but instinct—
rises in me like oil in water.

Then—

He crushes the flowers beneath his heel—
Each step bruises silence.
The tempo quickens.
My chest pulses.
My mind swells.
There’s no name for this feeling—
Only the cold drip of panic,
The static behind my eyes,
The phantom memory of pain.

He leans closer—
Not like a man,
But like a thing that remembers being one.

“It was supposed to be mine.”

His voice scrapes—
Like rusted gears chewing through prayer.

I do not move.
I do not breathe.

Because if I do,

He might remember
how to kill.

Suddenly—

From the bed of broken flowers, something manifests.
A glint. A shimmer. A contradiction.
A knife—
impossibly delicate,
brutally real.
As if violence had bloomed alongside beauty.

It catches his fractured gaze.
His head jerks—snaps—toward the shimmer.
His voice rasps, charred and glitching:

“But maybe—”

He stumbles forward, his movements erratic,
like a recording skipping through memories.

With trembling hands—
hands that mirror my own—
he reaches for it.

The blade fits him too well.
Too easily.
Each finger joint clicks into place around the hilt,
as though he was made for this moment.
Or it was made for him.

The flowers recoil in silence.
He doesn’t notice.
He presses the edge against his chestplate—testing it—
curious,
like a child with a new toy.

Then he looks at her.
Porcelain. Still. Watching.

His eyes flicker.

He turns to us—
knife raised like revelation.
His voice is honeyed static:

“Hey—hey.
I got an idea…”

He grins, too wide.
Something ancient hides in that grin.

“Step aside, burnt man.
I’m gonna carve into her—
and maybe, just maybe…
we’ll finally learn something.
Yes—
Learn.”

Then he looks at me again.
Pauses.
His smile fades.

A sneer cracks his face.

His grip tightens,
as if preparing for a sin.

"You know what—
Forget it."

Suddenly—
he bolts.

The knife glints in his wake,
catching the last rays of unbroken sun.
Behind him,
the flowers bleed chrome.

He holds the knife at his side,
as if it’s crucifix—
prepared to exterminate her.

My hands stutter.
My mouth breathes heavily.
My body motions.
Each metal crevice,
highlighted by metal bolts,
contorts.
There is a deep strain on my heart.
As if my heartstrings are being pulled.
My mortal fabric,
confused.

Suddenly—
he’s a few steps away—
I shake,
I breathe heavier,
I grip the wooden bench.

But I remember—
the dog,
the children,
the wife.
I remember—
what humanity is.
And what must define it.

— ⊹ ⊹ ⊹ —

I felt it—
a sharp pain etched into my chest.
My heart.

Then—
he rips something out of me.
The metal appendage,
torn clean from where my humanity once lived.

I don’t turn.
I keep my back to him.
As if seeing him again
would corrupt what little grace remains.

A sound—
not a scream, not a roar—
just metal against stone.
The knife, dropped.
Then—
a collapse.

Even without looking,
I see it too clearly:
he’s on the ground,
hands over his face,
fists in his hair,
curled like a child in confession.

“I swear… I didn’t mean to—”

It’s followed by a laugh—
high-pitched, broken.
Woven with sobs.

His blood and snot smear his voice,
slurring it into something pitiful.
Inhuman.

And as the crimson gushes from my chest,
I feel my lungs cave.
My heart still.

It should be a hallucination.
But it isn’t.
It’s revelation.

I see the truth—
the obvious, long buried:

Lies.
Jealousy.
Sin.

Her cosmic gaze returns—
not angry.
Just watching.

And through it,
the blood whispers:
Humanity was never defined by kindness.

I see it—
Prostitution.
Famine.
War.

Blood drips.
Its rhythm stings behind my eyes.
My body shakes.

I can’t tell—
which of us
was taken for granted.

It floods into memory:
the end of time,
the end of man.

Each frame sharp:

Soldiers,
fighting for politics,
coming home as murderers.

Scum,
consumed by lust,
coming home as liars.
As disgrace.

Water—
so blackened by secrets
it no longer reflects.

And through it all—
our blood runs the same.
Doesn’t it?

Though it strikes me—
I can’t tell
if he and I
are different at all.

I laugh with him.
Quietly.
Madly.
Because I don’t know—
if I want to be human.
To be a lamb.
To exist in a world
this vile.

—

Then—
her hands.
Her gaze.
Her smile.

They pierce me
like light through a wound.

A divine horror.
As if the edge of a blade
became the shape of the world.

Her fingers stretch toward my cheek—
motherlike.
As if asking me to stay awake
forever.

Her touch—
cold,
but human.

It brushes my face.
And I realize:
I was weeping.
Eyes wide.

The world breathes
good and evil both.
And it’s a breath
I can’t force down.

Balance isn’t truth.
Not even in her touch.
Even her humanity
feels so far away.

Then—
her words cleave the silence:

“Salvation—
Atone for the sins.
Repention.”

My unoxidized eyes—
drowsy—
lift to meet her gaze.

The light turns orange.
Everything still burns.
Nothing changes.

I look down.
My arms.
My legs.

I’m crucified.
Not by hands—
but by some unseen will.
By fate.

Each limb nailed—
stretched across a beam
I never saw being built.

Crucified
for no sin.
Not for love.
But for everything
that was left behind.

She blinks.

Time cracks.

The past, the present, the end—
all flicker in fractured flashes.

Then—
silence.

I float.

Black space.
No breath.
No ground.

I touch my wound—
it’s gone.

But if I’m alive—
if I ever was—
how am I breathing now?

Haven’t I
repented enough?

Salvation, let it…
Severance.

Purge what’s left of me.
Flush out my corrupted soul.

Immortality.
Mortality.
They mean nothing.

I
mean
nothing.

Severance.
Burn me.
Hang me.
Kill me
for sins I didn’t choose.

This is fatalism,
made flesh.
I’ve seen the ariels.
I’ve felt her threads—
her puppet strings
woven around me.

A lamb.
Sacrificed for an audience.

Even my flesh,
my bones,
my skin—
buried in an exosuit.

Armor for what?
To hide
what was already hidden.

Pride.
Greed.
Wrath.
Envy.
Lust.
Gluttony.
Sloth.

All built
into this machine.

Generations
welded their fatalism into me.

I don’t stand on the shoulder of giants.
I stand on the spine
of the devil—
and the crushed wings
of angels.

I saw him—
that madman—
crushing fragile life
beneath his heel,
expecting silence.

The flowers—
resilient.
Volatile.
Beautiful in steel.

And yet—
from way out here,
detached from flesh and name—

I still don’t know:
What was the purpose
of any of it?

[End of Chapter]