Oh, I hadn’t thought of that
Oh, we're stripping down the entire thing? Yeah alright...
Pretend that my post up above is bolded, and questions to Esme. We need something to turn fresh corpses into skeletons, and preferably a way to dispose of the leftover meaty bits.
If we can get those tools, the plan is to make these three like Piecewise was when we woke up. Down to the skeleton, with their hearts acting as cores.
We'll use Phantoms to animate these. Try to hook ones that appear to have a good balance of power and hunger.
+1
Also maybe a fresh change of clothes. This is gonna get... really messy.
Say, do we know what holds Piecewise's bones together?
+1
+1
What tools, exactly, does one use to strip flesh from bone or extract an intact heart?
Hmm. Might want a plan to dispose of the bits we won't end up needing.
Esme indicates she doesn't really know the finer points of butchering like that. She does however say that she thinks they use pressure hoses to clean remaining meat off of bones in slaughterhouses.
Esme offers up some sealed metal drums from one corner of the warehouse. They're the sort of drums you'd keep oil or some other type of liquid in; about 4 feet tall with large circular openings in the top for pouring or siphoning. Not big enough to shove a body into whole, but easily large enough to jam meat through.
"These, along with some of the gasoline from other drums, should be good enough to keep the remains contained till we can have someone pick them up. Just make sure to remember which are which."
You ask Esme for a fresh set of clothing to be prepared and then rummage through the warehouse. Despite being a dummy, it has all the various goods you'd expect from a warehouse, including a crate containing various plates, metal kitchen goods, and most importantly, cooking knifes. They're not quite the purpose built tools you'd have liked, but they'll do. You return to the group and lay out a handful of knives on the table with a clatter. Esme looks at them with the first sign of squeamishness you've seen in her tonight. The murder apparently didn't bother her, or at least she had steeled herself for it. The abstract talk of disposing bodies was fine too, but these very real tools and the truth of what was about to happen apparently sunk in.
"I'm going to go get that set of clothing." She says, still looking at the knives, "I'll be back before dawn. If anything happens, just a make a run for it and I'll meet you back that hotel. The one you were...born in?" She looks at you and seems to be seeing you with new clarity.
You nod to her and then help Piecewise get the first body up onto the table. You hear her close the door behind her as you cut the jacket and shirt off the first man. Daniel. He has memories of butchering cattle and sheep. You watch them in your minds eye, watch the foreign hands work with the steady confidence of a job long practiced and perfected. Its not a perfect analog of course, but it will do. You lay the knife on Daniel's shoulder and, following his hands, begin to cut.
*****
You sit against the wall, the coldness of the correlated metal only vaguely registering. The three barrels, half filled with gasoline, half with human remnants, sit in front of you like solders standing at attention. Your sleeves are still soaked; you'd used sea water to wash the blood off the tops of the barrels and the table as best you could, stuffing the rags you'd used into the barrels afterwards. It will be dawn soon, in fact you think dawn might just be breaking now; there was a tiny sliver of gray light out on the horizon last time you were outside.
The new skeletons, clean or at least as clean as you could possibly make them, are standing next to the table where you left them. You had thought that you might have had to string the bones together with wire or something but an examination of piecewise and further experiments showed that all you needed to do was animate the skeleton as a singular thing and the bones would somehow stay together. It made sense in hindsight: piecewise is moving without muscle, so there's no reason the bones would necessarily need to be held together by anything. The strain from animating them, however, was far greater than you expected. Your ring, previously glowing brightly red, is now barely glowing at all. You feel very tired, not sore or sleepy like living people get, but just as though the air is thick and syrupy, making every movement slow and difficult.
Esme is in front of you all at once, with seemingly no warning or intervening time. You blink and she is there.
"Are you ok?" You hear her ask, new clothing being set on the floor in front of you. Her voice seems to be coming from far away. She's looking at you with concern and you're not sure why.
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Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 119372 times)