Chaotic Night

By: Indigo

*Archivist's note: This was written under the name Baby Lethe for KJ's Guess the Author Challenge*

"See the blade, razor fine? You will know that it's mine once I strike brilliant sparks off your bone!"

Bravely, the man on the table forced his hazel eyes to look up at the figure who loomed over him, face alight with a mixture of menace and lust. "Cut the theatrics, okay, and just *do* it. "

"It's all part of the show, you know? Don't you want a great story to tell your grandchildren?" The laughter in the voice was not exactly pleasant. "See my laser, so nice? One quick flash and a slice, it will open you up for my care!"

Oh, no -- the rhymes. Not the speaking in rhyme again, the observer thought sadly. It's another one of those days. Indulging the madness.

"A few hours, you'll be whole! Yeah, you sold me your soul! Last chance, do you want to back out?"

"No! You know what I had to sacrifice to get here! Just do it! No crazy rhymes! No dramatic gestures! Just do it!" cried the man on the table, using rage to allay the terror he had to be feeling.

Perhaps not, after all, thought the observer, wide eyes widening impossibly further. It sounds like a warning -- a suggestion that maybe he doesn't want to go through with this. Take the out! Take it...

The voice did not answer anymore. The man on the table lost all his bravado and screamed in earnest as the machinery descended from the ceiling.

The observer wanted to squeeze shut his clear blue eyes, but he forced himself to watch. He always did. At least, until the one who spoke in rhyme noticed. But that rarely happened. Time didn't function right in the Shoppe. It was a gordian knot wound around an Escherian hallucination -- time and space wrapped around each other in a Moebius loop, and there was always a hole for the observer to slip through, unnoticed.

He sometimes wondered if the hole was left there intentionally -- so he could come, observe, and salve the festering pain of this dimension with his clarity and indefatigable innocence. He came in the hopes that his presence was a comfort -- an anchor -- a lifeline back into the relative calm of sanity from the roiling maelstrom of madness that dominated this place.

Blood sprayed across the silver-white metal and tile wall. The man on the table clenched his teeth on the scream that tried to pry its way out past his lips.

Brilliant sparks struck, as promised when the spinning, shining blade hit bone.

And the observer could watch no more. Cursing himself for his weakness, he leapt from his hiding place, swung up into an airvent and scrambled away, stomach making its rebelliousness unhappiness known. He lay there, cheek against the cold metal, darkness staved off by the gentle golden glow he gave off. He sucked in deep breaths, preferring the scent of the antiseptics and disinfectants to the ichorous odor of offal and blood.

Below, in the operating theatre, the man on the table slipped into a thankful, blissful unconsciousness. The monitors wired into his body musically counted out the beats of his heart and other vital life functions.

Behind the surgical mask, a pair of silver eyes devoid of all reason, watched impassively -- then darted upward briefly. There was a brief shine across their surface, as if tears were welling. Then a blink of snowy lashes and they were gone, and the insane intense gaze was back.

The observer, no longer observing, dropped, with a light, catlike grace to the surface of the floor -- black leather soles making no sound on the metal floor.

On his way toward the exit, and the polluted silicon-blipvert atmosphere that would be sweet by comparison to this place, he had to pass the Gallery. Where trophies were posted of prevoius works done here:

Ocular units, looking like real eyes -- but in truth, cameras; not pupils, but shutters, and microtransmitters.

Bone-replacements and augmentations -- tiny microfilaments, fiber optics, metal nanites that shift and change to protect the skeleton or attack an opponent.

A cyborg body, to replace broken organics -- metal and plastic, wires and circuits, in place of flesh and blood.

The observer looked away, and the glow resumed. He knew the hole was closing and the dimension was shifting again. He dared not get caught here. He had responsibilities of his own on the outside -- his wife, his world. They needed him.

So did she. She whose wall of trophies were replacements of things nature never meant to replace.

He lifted his three-fingered hand to his lips and kissed them, then blew a kiss toward the monitor that captured his boyishly cute face. "On the day you find our way out of the maelstrom, I'll be here. I promise," he whispered. Then pulling a tiny flechette from its place on his clothing, he flung it at the camera. It flew unnerringly and disabled the camera so it could not track his departure.

Chances against the owner of the shop finding her way out of the maelstrom were stacked impossibly high. But the observer wasn't afraid. He had a talent -- a gift for playing the 1000-to-1 and coming out ahead.

He ran out into the night after one longing look back -- and his black clothing blended with the chaotic night, making him invisible.

And his own clear, innocent eye lit his way home.

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