A Corpse Reader

Descending - Act 2 | Chapter 25 - A Corpse Reader
Eleven Hours and Six Minutes Since Juna Was Found Dead

Juna was alive. No, that wasn't right. Her limp body was stuffed inside the very sack Theo struggled to carry for the past five hours. His bottom spine seared with unimaginable pain and both shoulders had rubbed raw from the straps constantly sliding. Even a slight adjustment of the straps, or a twist of his back almost forced him to a knee.

The weight on his back was definitely a corpse.

Though Edgar and Flavia had said otherwise. The conversation of Corpse Readers died down right after Edgar gave his two cents and then ordered silence. Since then they halted their trek for a break once that lasted only a mere five minutes. They ate dried meat, drank from a single canteen passed around, and checked to make sure their supplies were still intact. Even with Theo managing to free his spine from the burden of a body, the pain remained. All the worse that with each tear into the dried meat with his teeth ended up burning his blistered lip and nose from the brawl with Juna's murderer. The pain in his face from Doru's punches were still there, only now there was a worse pain to distract him from it during the walk.

Theo still had questions about this state of death and what kind of pain someone who is dead…still feels?

Was that right? If only Edgar hadn't ordered everyone back to their original position and firmly told them to shut their traps, then maybe Theo would have known. But he didn't. That scared him. The unknown. He thought he had gotten used to such a thing.

Juna was alive. That wasn't right, but her being dead wasn't correct either. A state of unconsciousness where her body couldn't be moved and her heart was no longer beating, but she was there. Her feelings got across to Flavia and apparently a proper Corpse Reader could find out more.

Maybe in Ground One, Theo thought.

There was a chance. So far everything of importance was lower than The First Layer. If a Corpse Reader like Flavia could make out a few vague feelings Juna has like fear, then wouldn't a Corpse Reader from a lower Grounds find out more?

Theo shook his head. He adjusted the sack. His shoulders stung.

He was thinking in a way that made it seem like he actually believed the nonsense of what Edgar and Flavia spoke. Like Theo believed in Corpse Readers. When someone dies they die, that's the correct observation yet, the people down here think otherwise. They hear otherwise. Absurd. All crazy talk by people from another world. People Theo couldn't openly believe.

…

Isn't that what Radu warned against?

Theo had to be more accepting.

He'd seen a Stone that brought a bright white light into existence and engulfed an entire cave from inside a small leather satchel. The tremors of Coloana-Vie had been felt at his feet. He even watched as a muddied, white liquid did more than just bring Specks back to life—it reformed him. A tail turned into the whole of Specks. Alive, again.

Corpse Readers didn't seem as crazy now.

Theo took a breath and understood the weight on his back wasn't just of a dead body, but of an unconscious mind still alive. If that even made sense.

No—it actually made more sense than Theo first believed. After all, a state like Edgar spoke described his sister's paralysis. Excluding the non-beating heart, wasn't Juna and Kaida's situation the same? After that incident that led to Kaidia's injury, her whole body from the neck down went unresponsive. Luckily the feeling from her neck up remained, though Kaidia never smiled, almost as if she too lost feeling there.

Over time she had to be fed by hand, taken to the bathroom by a nurse, and stretched daily by her caretaker so her limbs wouldn't curl up like a dying spider.

Before Kaidia eventually made progress and began to gain feeling back in her arm, there was a time where truly all hope felt lost. Kaidia developed a case of phantom pain. Even though she couldn't feel or move her body, she swore she was in pain. The nurses described it as Kaidia imagining the pain in her body and the receptors in her brain enforced those beliefs.

She would wake up from sleep in a cold sweet, screaming that the blanket was crushing her. The pain she imagined was so immense her tears would drain into her mouth and choke her until a nurse arrived to sit her up and toss the blanket off, relieving Kaidia of this false pain.

One of the worst cases was when Kaida had been strolled outside on a wheelchair. While looking at a flock of ducks near a pond, the nurse ended up setting the wheelchair in an ant bed. Since Kaida had no feeling below her neck, it wasn't until the colony of ants reached her stomach that she noticed them.

Frantically she wailed to get them off. Crying. Scared. Helpless. Unable to get the ants of herself, Kaidia cried for help. It wasn't until the nurses had stripped Kaidia of her clothes and rested her in a warm tub of water that she finally stopped feeling the sensation of crawling insects on her body.

Of course Kaida eventually overcame the mental challenge of phantom pains. Nia was transferred in as her primary care taker and Kaidia started to slowly gain back feeling in her arms. Three weeks after managing to move all five fingers on her right hand Kaida—with Nia's help—made Theo the quartz stone bracelet on his wrist. A memento that things can get better even at your lowest.

Kaida was Theo's younger sister. Someone who's shown more strength than he would ever hope to have. She truly was a miracle in all aspects. Even though Theo would never be able to feel her pain, he at least knew how unimaginably horrible it must have been.

And Juna was apparently the same. Feeling that same pain, unknowingly. Her body was unresponsive yet she still knew what being scared felt like. She still felt her gut twist itself for food yet she could not eat. Her throat probably hurt too. Scraping against the loose flesh from her cut with each step Theo took.

Juna wasn't alive—but she was there.

Just like Kaidia.

Liquid splashed onto the right side of Theo’s neck. Thick. Warm. He looked up. The cave had gotten taller than when they first arrived. The light no longer reached the top. It crawled up the cave walls but stopped before ever vanishing the dark mist above.

Even without visibility, Theo didn’t notice any leaking from above. He touched his neck, dipping the tips of his fingers in the wetness, and pulled it to his face.

A mush blanked-red with slivers of meat soaking inside.

Theo’s breathing stopped.

He looked to his side.

Horror consumed his face like mites.

Aurelia’s abdomen had been impaled by a slender, glossy, spider-like leg. The appendage curled her limp body up, dangling her in the air and pulling her into the darkness at The Chasm’s top. Blood spilled out from her mouth like a broken faucet and her eyes fought to stay at the front of her skull. As her limbs dangled and shook, shoulders twitching and mouth foaming, Aurelia’s widened eyes met Theo’s, then she disappeared into the darkness.

Pulled above the rest. Vanished.

Theo couldn’t speak or even scream. His throat wouldn’t let anything pass. Static filled his ears and tunneled through his mind and his own beating heart felt inhuman. Paranoid.

A flash garnered his attention and snapped him back proper. A blade whizzed into the darkness above and instantly Aurelia's body fell from the darkness and splattered on the stone ground. The massive spider-limb came with her.

Edgar rushed to Aurelia’s side and caught the fallen dagger he had thrown as he did. Kicking away the insect's twitching leg, Edgar knelt down and examined Aurelia's condition. He immediately cussed.

“She’s experiencing asphyxia,” Edgar said, applying a compression to her abdomen. “Her throat's closing.”

A wounded screech yelped from above and the sounds of stone being peaked by multiple sharp limbs could be heard as that thing scurried away.

“Flavia, I need you to support her head while I cut her throat open,” Edgar Commanded. “Once she starts breathing again it’s up to you to close the wound in her gut.”

No response.

“Flavia!”

Theo turned to Flavia, who he thought was in a panicked state like himself. But where Flavia once stood was now a standing corpse. Her eyes had been plucked from her body, leaving hollow sockets of blood to drain in their place. The entirety of her skin had dried up as if every ounce of blood was sucked from out her body.

Theo crumpled to the ground. Chocked on his own breath. Began to feel as though his own skin was shriveling. That his own eyes were loose enough to fall out of place, or his abdomen pierced clean through without a sound. Paranoid.

Looking back at Flavia, Theo barfed in his mouth. What was once a white, shriveled, empty corpse only seconds ago—was now a skin melting statute that ran hideously with pulsing black veins.

“Snatcher poison," Edgar whispered.

Before Theo could see him, Edgar pushed him towards the cave wall. Theo slammed into it shoulder first, then watched as Edgar pulled a stick from his bag. A cracked Stone followed second, and as Edgar placed the Stone to the stick it caught fire, instantly.

And instantly, Flavia’s Stone went dark. The white light vanished. The light that had tracked their progress from the start—vanished. Theo was trapped in complete darkness. All except for Edgar’s torch.