ANATHEMA—THÁNA—ATHAMÉ

      All stories are about Death, except the ones that are about Life, which by deduction are also about Death. All dreams are about devouring, except the ones that are about throwing up, which by deduction are also about devouring. Everytime Burakh would dream he would eat: he would eat voraciously, passionately. His teeth would tear through the thread binding waking world and sleeping world like he was pulling stitches. Like he was trying to pry himself open. 

(It was happening more and more often — these limbos, these lingerings. Being pried open… It happened once. The illness leveled itself through him like a crowbar, like a knife through a shell.

Prying open… He shook his head then. Modny ish, khavirgan sar, golyn ereg, tolgod…)

And he was: at the threshold of that wound, between the open lips of this parted cut, laid and lived the snaking path of his ways; the rope he was to walk to the knowledge of the Earth and the knowledge of everything else.

The knowledge of… He thought he knew this. He knew he had dreamed this — but it was cold this time. Yes, it hadn’t been cold.

      He walked the threshold—against his better judgment, he thought, but then again, where else was he to go? He walked the damn threshold and everything fell, like dust settling on him, cold. 
He knew it was a dream: he had entered Thanatica. He had entered Thanatica, hadn’t he? Without having seen its insides with his two eyes, every fiber of his tranced self was telling him this was the place . 
The anatomical theater curled around a central stage, front of which was flanked by a table of slick, dark wood. Burakh didn’t feel too out of place—he’d visited his fair share during his studies, and was more surprised that the theater didn’t wrap itself all around the table; like a snake, like a reverse panopticon watching over pallor mortis. He didn’t have time to be surprised much more, however: someone was here. He recognized the asymmetrical coat immediately—and was mildly ashamed of it, too, as it meant he had stared before. 
Dankovsky turned on his heels to face him. He was not wearing his red tie or vest, his shirt was a pristine ivory.

      “You’re late,” his voice rose, strong and booming—he was expecting spectators. It bounced off the dark wood seats from which ghosts were observing the play. “I almost considered doing it at your place.”
      “Doing what, erdem?” 

He felt like a fool for asking. He stumbled on his lines and his voice croaked, as if suddenly timid. Dankovsky stepped aside. His coat curtained, for a brief second, what Burakh could see of the table—and when it was pulled back, he could see someone was there. 
Panic crawled up Burakh’s spine like a cold spider when he saw the body displayed, grey and stiff and (almost modestly so) covered in an ivory sheet. He frantically looked around for Dankovsky. He found only his clothes, enigmatically standing still on their own, worn by his nonexistent silhouette as his body laid there—laid there, grey and stiff and covered, almost modestly so, to the neck.

He knew it was a dream because the tools table walked towards him—walked, its legs bending at too many knees—before settling and standing still. Burakh laid eyes on the dead man—on the Bachelor, on Dankovsky, on oynon, erdem; in and for all: a corpse. 
His head was tilted back an imperceptible bit, his wide, white, open eyes seeking the heart of the dome above that capped the theater. His arms were not covered: they flanked, hard and pale, his sheeted silhouette. The veins snaked under marble-grey skin, sinuous brush strokes from the hollow of his elbows to his strained wrists. Burakh’s eyes found the ribbed plains of the backs of hands and he promptly looked away. Seeing the good doctor without his gloves felt obtrusive and brash. He had never taken them off in Burakh’s presence and, Burakh thought, seeing red lines striating the skin, he must’ve kept them on to spare everyone around those nervous scratches, the visible manifestation of a slow, scared, strenuous descent. Burakh shook his head—he didn’t want to assume. It wasn’t his place to assume. Below the pad of the thumb and the sharp hill of the pisiform bone, ligaments protruded, taut strings of the tuned instruments that once were the Bachelor’s hands—those were curled in half-fists, as if death had struck him mid-grief.

Burakh reached for the tools. They were ornate, heavy with arabesques and carvings. He immediately thought those were, of course, not his, which reassured him only a little. He had peeked in Dankovsky’s suitcase, though, and those didn’t look like his either. He should probably just stop trying to make sense out of this. His hand aimed for a pair of scissors; it grew eight obsidian legs and carried its adorned silverness off the tools table and into the tiers, not before Burakh let out a startled gasp. 
He found a scalpel, nested it in his hand. His fingers fit around it perfectly and his stomach churned with a rising, unsettling feeling. With his other hand, he pinched the shroud at the neck and slowly pulled it, folding it reverently as he went. He revealed the top of the chest; the slopes of the clavicles, the ladder of the upper ribs; then, down to the diaphragm, above which the Bachelor’s sternum dipped firmly into his flesh; down to the stomach, denuding the row of stitches from which sprawled a fixed, frozen bruise; the navel; Burakh finally folded the shroud on the Bachelor’s hips. 

      “Oh, you’re not even going to buy me dinner first?" A voice rose—from the table.

Burakh’s spine grew stiff and sharp. His jaw hurt. He looked; the corpse was looking back at him with deep dark eyes. The corpse was as corpse as any dead man can be: it still— he still was glancing at Artemy. Staring with two little black wells apparently resuscitated, and threatening to swallow Burakh whole. The eyebrows muscles and optic nerves moved, the rest of the visage an eerie, unsettling rigidity. 

      “You know I would if I had any money, erdem,” Burakh replied. It seemed to please the corpse very much, as Dankovsky let out a jagged, amused laugh that rang through his rigor mortis-ridden body.

Burakh pressed the blade at the base of the neck, in the inviting hollow of the jugular notch. It dipped in like butter. The cut was slow, steady. Made no sound. At the diaphragm, Burakh took the blade alongside the edges of the coastal arch, one side after the other—he had no trouble finding the risen hills of cartilage: the poor city doctor didn’t have much meat on his frame, and the plague probably didn’t help. Burakh thought he heard a hum, a few sung notes; the corpse hadn’t opened its mouth, and yet Burakh was sure he recognized his voice. He followed the lines—the Lines—of the last of the Bachelor’s ribs; delicate, almost, as the blade brushed bone. He parted the cut like curtains open. He found nothing more than himself dumbfounded—no skeleton, no lungs, no heart, no liver. He found organs, organs he didn’t know the name of. Organs a radiant blood red, some merlot, some ruby, some berry, brick and blush and garnet red—organs he didn’t know the function of. They were all pressed together, huddled almost, closer to small animals, to pups and cubs than body parts. Burakh felt guilty disturbing them. They would have loved ribs to nestle under, his tranced mind brought up, but there isn’t a single bone for them to burrow beneath. He was, for a brief second, invigorated in this dream he was sure would lead him somewhere, and dipped his fingers past the lips of the inflicted wound.

      “Ah… You would think it would tickle,” Dankovsky’s voice rose from his frozen throat. “I assume it could be because…”
      “You’re awfully warm for a corpse,” Burakh interrupted. “Awfully chatty, too.”
      “And you’re awfully aware, for a dreaming man.”

Something in the Bachelor’s voice shut Burakh up. It wasn’t scary, low and deep, otherworldly. In fact, it was terrifyingly normal—sardonic, even cheery in ways that made Artemy’s chest hurt. If it took being a corpse for the Bachelor to express this merry, morbid amusement, well… Oh, how he deeply disliked to think about it. (He deeply disliked to think about the Bachelor jaunty and jolly; it made his lungs heavy with grief and the feeling he’d have liked to meet him in another time, another place; only followed by the knowledge that they’d have detested each other in any other circumstance.) 

The sound of entrails and ichor moving around his fingers was all that was heard in the empty theater. Burakh felt his throat tighten, his mouth grow full of nauseated spit. He steadied his breathing. He saw how Dankovsky was looking at him, brows slightly furrowed, as if perhaps puzzled by his reaction. The red lumps of unnamed guts were slick with blood, slippery and bright. They met Burakh’s hands then promptly retracted. They all seemed to be coursed through by rhythms unknown. They were all detached, all conjoined, all hungry and shy at once; they all perfectly fit in place, a self-contained microcosm, and yet were the most baffling aberration, the most horrific mutation Burakh had ever seen. He couldn’t even fathom the cosmogony of this pulsating, raw, petrifying, ruby cluster. They clung to his fingers, almost avid. They coated him a crimson red. They seemed to hum. Time was stretched like a tightrope and, Christ, Burakh was starting to think he should stop walking it and hang himself (hopefully, he’d wake up).

      “Your blood is… thick.”

Dankovsky didn’t blink. He kept his gaze on Burakh’s face (Burakh stubbornly refused eye contact: he felt that meeting the arrow of his stare would kill him).

      “Syrupy. It’s like… honey. Crystalizing around my fingers.”
      “What do you find?”

As if spoken into existence, a thin chain found Burakh’s hands. The links were small, the look of those bound to pocket watches, the color indiscernible under the thick crimson coat. Burakh pulled—the red masses moved and made way. They spat out a clot, no bigger than a kopek—the abruptness of which made Burakh throw a worried glance the corpse’s way; he hadn’t budged, moved, lifted a brow: it hadn’t hurt, he wasn’t even looking at his open thorax. He was looking at Burakh. He had been looking at Burakh for a while. His lips had sheared off their usual thin, uptight and uppity half-smile and were sealed in prudent, straight pout. He blinked. Burakh took it as a sign and he brought his discovery to his eyes; his fingers, slippery and smeared, almost had it slither out of their grasp. It took a few seconds for Burakh to wipe the viscous, thick glaze of blood wine off the newfound trinket—a locket. Then, his nail found a hatch on its side and a photograph inside. The theater was dead (ha!) silent as he recognized one of the two faces staring back. Way younger, of course, but still the same unmistakable hair, the nose that had barely changed, even the half-smile tugging at the mouth: it was the Bachelor, it was Dankovsky. With those red apples for cheeks, Burakh could give him ten, twelve years of age, not more. The other person, Burakh could only make a guess: mom, most likely. The nose, the hair color were the same, she had that same not-quite smile—it didn’t look as haughty on her, though he now knew where Dankovsky got his from. The corpse spoke, and Burakh realized he was probably right:

      “I did well to take that with me. Bring the photographs home, too. I kept them all on my desk at Thanatica: looking at them gave me strength when I had to break waves like a battering ram. I don’t know what she would have thought of me. Nevertheless, had I left them there, they’d have burned like the rest. That is… not something I’m too happy thinking about.”
      “That’s where we are, right? Thanatica?” Burakh knew, of course he did, he just cut (ah!) the Bachelor off to stop his voice from growing sorry and somber. Burned? (so this was it. They both knew… somehow.)
      “Damn right we are,” Dankovsky answered, a twinge of unabashed pride rolling off his tongue. 
      “Is it always this empty?” Burakh teased. 

Dankovsky found his eyes—by Boddho, he found them well. He stared intently, intensely, he drew Artemy in the two pits of his pupils, the usual brown of his irises swallowed by black. The room grew dead-cold. 

      “Is it empty? Burakh, is it empty?”

Burakh searched the tiers. They were empty—except those that weren’t. Nothingness inhabited, and she was loud, heavy. She was very entertained. 
Burakh carefully slipped the locket in his pocket, heard the ringing of chain. He’d give it back, of course. 
He didn’t know what he was looking for—he didn’t know if he was looking for something at all, but he carried on. He sought passage between two organs that twitched at the touch, as if suddenly woken up. He probed around, looking for attachment tissue to section, for bones to saw. He didn’t find any. It felt closer to lockpicking than autopsy, he thought, and then said it out loud.

      “Do you lockpick often?” The Bachelor asked.
      “... Are you going to think less of me if I said yes.”
      “No, Burakh. Of course not. I do not lockpick in my free time, but… Well. I can’t say I haven’t started. There are lots of empty houses in your town, Burakh.”
      “There are, oynon. There really are…”

Burakh felt something climb up his fingers, nestle in the hollow of his palm: bringing it to his eyes, he found a round, golden beetle, perfectly clean of blood and gore. 

      “Oh…” It rubbed its legs together, ran in a circle. “Let me put you down,” he said, and he did. The golden dot rose up the tiers, climbed between chairs, and was out of sight. 

Burakh felt something climb up his arm. 

It was long, a hint of wet, scraping in the ways of karstic rock. He did—didn’t—did dare to look, squinting, over his shoulder, as if whatever it was could claw his eyes out and slither in. It was long-wet-scraping it was red all over and its head black as if dipped in ink, it was a snake. It crawled, almost languid, the shaking branch of Burakh’s arm. It climbed him to the neck. It looped around like a noose. Burakh heard the snake breathe, and then model its breathing on his. Its two marbles-for-eyes reflected his face, distorted, grimacing, red in the cheeks with fear and anticipation. And the snake—did nothing else. 

       when-comes-tomorrow/when-you-cut-him-open 

       when-snakes-slither-out

Burakh’s hand — red, wet, shaking — hid the snake’s ink-black face from the audience, hid the audience’s night-black eyes from the snake’s face. 

      “Hey,” he—Burakh—spoke, “I’m not done yet. I need to let you go.”

The snake/Snake came apart. Slowly. It seemed almost unhurried. It unraveled from the neck down, dissolved in the loud, thick, white-cold air like sugar in tea. When only his onyx head was left, Burakh saw how he blinked, and sunk in his clothes, into, through. He could have cleaved Burakh in half, for all he knew. 
Dankovsky hadn’t budged. Burakh saw how his eyes — his marbles-for-eyes — heeded the dome above. Burakh came back to his side. He didn’t budge. The empty house of his partitioned ribcage echoed and rang around Burakh’s touch.

Burakh’s fingers grazed the depths of the opened chest, brushed lightly against the spine. A horrified shiver ran through his whole body when he felt bone and his fist snapped close in disgust. 
He had found something. It was red—with blood, with rust. It was coarse as if rotten. Oh, it was a key. 
He took a step back, carrying it away in the cup of his palm, and looked closer. It was familiar. It had been gone. It was now found. He had no idea what it could be. When he was back at Dankovsky’s dead-bedside, he had risen ten centimeters from the autopsy table.

      “Oynon… Levitation is for witches. You’re no witch, get down.”

Burakh realized what he had just said— utter nonsense , that’s what it was—when the corpse rose some more. Frantically, he tried to adjust the shroud that threatened to slip, the Bachelor’s privacy apparently a sudden, pressing concern as he was slowly ascending towards the dome.

“Erdem… Erdem !”

Burakh grabbed onto a wrist, convinced he would find it stiff and cold and could pull the Bachelor down; he didn’t. He got the wrist, the hand; the arm moved, supple and limp, as if Dankovsky was only sleeping, and the body continued to rise. In the seconds it took for Burakh to feel gauche about his hold on the doctor’s hand, the arm had extended, meeting its limits with a muted sound of bone that made Burakh’s skin crawl. He could pull it down, and he did. Slowly. He brought his other hand to the shoulder as to make sure Dankovsky didn’t flip on his side. The scapula rested nicely in the hollow of his palm. It was going well. Slow. 

It happened in a second: a cold, hard hand around his own wrist, sending a pang of panic through his limb—he didn’t let go, though. A sharp bout of laughter from the tiers. It pierced through him like a biting wind. The Bachelor flipped on his side, hovering, celestial, over him—barely for a second. He dropped to the ground with all of his weight. Burakh braced for the horrible sound of the impact—it didn’t come. His arm was tugged on with a violence he didn’t expect Dankovsky to have. He saw the ground pulling him in; he closed his eyes, waiting for his nose to get busted—it didn’t come either. 
The two of them, hand grasping around the other’s (he realized just how tight the Bachelor’s hold was), plummeted towards, then through, the tiles. They didn’t even break. They vanished. The freefall felt like his guts were torn out of Burakh’s body and pulled on like a leash. He found the two black wells of Dankovsky’s eyes, piercing through him, shining with a twisted, morbid amusement; and they sank into darkness awfully familiar—so familiar Burakh knew it had a name.

They—no, he found the bottom of that pit. The wooden floors met his knees, chest, missed his nose as he woke up in time for his elbows to suffer the blow. 

      “Cub? Everything okay?” A voice rose from the staircase.
      “Just a rough morning, Lara. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t morning at all. Not yet.
Burakh heard her hum, then her muffled footsteps grew silent down the stairs. 
A key and a locket fell out of his pocket. 
There was a way, there would be a way.

_____________

        VIVISECTOR, COME FORTH!
       At the altar of the open chest,
       Ribs parting open like fingers, like lips,
       Lay the offerings:
       The clay, molded,
       The milk, sour,
       Rainwater that has turned green,
       Your own eyes — closed
       Your own hands — red
       Your own blood — mandatory,
       sweet, not unlike
       sun-kissed pomegranates.
       At the altar of the open chest
       Pour the Libations
       Into the wound
       In the Earth —
       same thing ! —
       and watch how they are drank
       with an appetite
       uncomfortably close to yours.

       VIVISECTOR, COME FORTH!
       Work your magic of wands of cold steel!
       With hands of rusted bones!
       With fingertips ecchymosed, an unsettling pink.
       At the altar of the open chest,
       Kneel,
       Bring your hands in one hold,
       Speak into your fists,
       And bring the cup of your palms
       to spill over
       over the great open mouth
       with the tongue the spine.
       Kneel,
       Man who doesn’t believe,
       Or doesn’t believe yet.
       Kneel, and when hands will reach for you,
       crawling alive from the shrine,
       you will reach for them too,
       you will know what to do —
       you will kiss them fervently.

       (Vivisector, come forth —
       I say this line in a whisper,
       low enough for only you to hear —
       come forth, and bring alive
       the dead,
       who lies,
       whom you know,
       the dead who once did
       what you do
       now.)