Chapter III. Half-Eaten #4
Ariadne thought of several excuses that ranged from not having appropriate clothes to not feeling like it, but again none of them felt right. I can’t, I’m half-eaten, her mind whispered maliciously, and she shook her head. Worse than eaten, she corrected herself, ugly.
“Don’t look.” Ariadne removed her leggings, wriggling them out from under the dress, to submerge both legs.
It had been a while, she realized, since she had seen either the night sky without a roof above her head or her own body with someone next to her.
Quaint chuckled when she elbowed him playfully to cover his eyes, and he raised one hand to his face, obeying the request. Ariadne left the piece of clothing rolled up by her side and turned to him. “Quaint?”
“Yes?”
“The apartment looked like they left in a hurry. At first, I thought they were escaping from something, but we found Genebra’s dog in the kitchen with signs that he had been shot. The doorman also told us they left with a few visitors, but he didn’t recognize any of them.”
“Huh.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“The more I know, the more confident I am that we’ll find them alive.”
Ariadne bit her lower lip, tasting blood where she had bitten it during the nightmare.
“Is this related to what happened in 1972?”
“That’s…”
“If it is,” insisted Ariadne, “you need to tell me.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, and she realized that it really was dark.
The hotel had forgotten to illuminate the pool, and the moon and stars were hidden by heavy clouds.
Still, there was almost no distance between them, and she could feel his eyes considering her, his fangs clenching inside his jaw, his body tensing at the thought of sharing whatever had happened so many decades ago.
After a long moment, Quaint spoke:
“For many years, especially between the fifties and sixties, Erik and I were very close. We even lived together for a while in Argentina, then a couple of years in Brazil, on and off. By 1971, our initial affection cooled down irreparably because of his newest scientific curiosities, but we remained good friends.” Quaint touched the water as well, his ringed fingers whirling in the pool.
“In 1972, he calls me to his new house in Vitória. We’re having a conversation, and he tells me he’s going to get something to eat in the kitchen.
The memory becomes foggy after that. I wake up the following day, strapped to a dental chair.
I’m confused, but I can’t move. My left hand is searing with pain.
He sedates me again. This goes on for a week or two, until he decides it’s time to release me. ”
The nightmare burned inside her throat. Ten pairs of teeth, bloody gloves, a dental chair. And the yellow house that might not have been yellow at all, a tongue going down her throat, and raspy, disgusting words: I won’t ever tire of you, you’re staying here until you die …
Ariadne couldn’t answer. Whatever Erik had done was too far from the man she knew and too close to the part of her mind she refused to touch. She made an effort to nod to show she was paying attention, but her eyes were lost somewhere in the water.
“Erik used me to get a gul’s genetic material and observe how our regeneration process works under duress.
” Quaint lifted his hand, pointing at the base of his little finger, and droplets of water fell down his wrist. Ariadne touched the faded scar over his knuckle, feeling the subtle difference in skin.
“I imagine he excused himself by saying that it was not my dominant hand, that it was just a little finger, and I was sedated during the entire process. I only felt glimpses of pain when he severed it over and over and over again.”
“But why? Why would he…?”
“Erik gulified himself, and the result is that he has an enhanced lifespan and a taste for red meat. Nothing beyond that. Otherwise, he’s human and eats like one of you.”
Ariadne remembered how Erik had eaten twice as much as her, but, naive as she had been, she had thought it was because he was an adult man. Erik, that’s not rare, that’s raw, she had told him many times, but Erik had just laughed like a misbehaving child. You’re gonna get sick one of these days …
Her hand lingered on Quaint’s, hovering over the peony, and he didn’t move away.
“I don’t understand why you’re trying to help him.”
“My foolish heart knows no reason. I forgave him, or perhaps I felt avenged when he never grew back the foot he lost to test his own experiment.” The lines on the back of his hand were stiff, the salience of his veins evident under the tattoos.
“I don’t know if he deserves my forgiveness, but Erik has never gulified anyone but himself.
I’m sure he was kind to you, as he was kind to me on many different occasions, but this is also part of who he is. ”
The lights around the pool turned on, and Ariadne blinked, unaccustomed to the artificial illumination. She hurried to get up, pulling the dress down to cover her thighs as she was hit by a sudden wave of shame. Quaint grabbed her purse and stood up as well.
“What now?” asked Ariadne, turning around so he wouldn’t see her face.
“Now we get you something to eat. Tomorrow, we find Rafaela.”
This time, they went to the Italian restaurant downstairs, fuller than the one they’d previously been to, and they stuck to small talk.
Quaint insisted she could order anything—I love watching others try what I will never eat—and even made jokes with the waitress, as if they had not talked about his own amputation moments before: Oh, no, it’s only for her, I have been tragically cursed with so many food allergies that you wouldn’t believe …
Back in the suite, the red roses had been arranged in a crystal vase and placed on the coffee table.
Ariadne took a long bath after they retreated to their respective rooms, trying to tame the unruly thoughts in her head.
Don’t make that face, we’re the same! Erik had said, taking off his shoe and sock to reveal the prosthesis.
His model was older than hers, something he had developed before they met.
Why don’t you make one like this for yourself?
Ariadne had tapped the titanium. Why? I’m just an old man.
Erik had laughed it off. I’d rather focus on you any day …
Ariadne put on one of Erik’s old shirts and went into the empty living room. She sat on the rug and started to search the journals until she found the one from 1972.
I have been considering the alternatives.
Ideally, I would need a willing partner, but I don’t think I will find one among the guls.
The only person who could be convinced is Genebra (she would say yes, I’m sure she would, especially if I explained that I could help many others if this works) … But I can’t imagine hurting her.
“Can’t sleep?” Quaint stood at the door, and she raised her chin to look at him. His hair was down and wet, and he walked barefoot toward her.
“I’m trying to find something about this gulification process, because there are surely higher-ups interested in doing it,” said Ariadne. “I want to know what to expect, and why they need human body parts for the process.”
Quaint sat cross-legged on the floor and opened one of the journals.
“Do you mind if I read with you?”
“Be my guest.”
I have been checking my muscular strength, and there have been some improvements, but nothing too remarkable, said one of the post-experiment notes, together with kilogram numbers from the grip dynamometer: 45, 50, 60, 65.
My teeth have also remained the same, but that was to be expected, said another, together with folded realistic drawings of gul and human dentition.
Some relevant changes in my appetite: I have been craving meat in unreasonable quantities, thankfully not human.
I have tried what was left of my foot, but found it too repulsive to keep in my stomach.
Quaint stretched his neck to read over her shoulder.
Big mistake to have been so arrogant as to think my foot would grow back like theirs do!
Ariadne read several reports Erik had made of the changes, most of them inconclusive.
Quaint woke up a few hours ago; tried to bite me right away.
He was always prone to overreaction, read one of the entries that made her feel sick to her stomach.
Good news: while he did manage to break my nose, it seems that I have some enhanced regeneration, and might recover quickly.
“I should have eaten him when I had the chance,” snarled Quaint. He seemed ashamed of having voiced the thought, but Ariadne smiled, forgetting about the journal, the nightmare, Cabaré. The absurdity of it made her laugh, and she covered her mouth to hide a chuckle. “And you laugh at it!”
Quaint closed the journal and threw it on the pile of notebooks, a mischievous grin appearing on his face as Ariadne tittered.
“I’m sorry—it’s just—the idea of it, for some reason…” The smile hurt her cheeks. Quaint laughed, too, and she wished that was it: it was all a joke, what happened to him, what happened to her, what Erik had done. “This is so surreal. The Erik I knew was the opposite.”
“You seem to have met a gentler side of him.”
“I guess I did.” Ariadne took one of the earlier journals distractedly, leafing through the pages.
Yesterday, Quaint took me to the Juliette, an underground bar for goules.
Genebra, the lovely Portuguese lady who was in his Montparnasse home the other Monday, said she could take us there at eight, and so she did.
They were both so finely dressed when the car arrived that I tried to rush back to the boardinghouse immediately, with the intent of never going out again, but that seemed to amuse them further. The Juliette …
“Maybe not this one,” said Quaint, covering the rest of the page with one hand. “I would have to check what he wrote first.”
“Ashamed of something, I see.”
“Not ashamed, just…” Quaint took another notebook, and she panicked when she saw it was the journal that came after the one she had read the previous day.
“Oh, you’re here! ‘Ariadne is especially fascinated with gul dentition. We spent the entire night discussing her questions regarding anatomy, and I must say she had the funniest—and wittiest—questions. She was not tired in the morning (oh, to be young…), and she got to perform her first tooth extraction. Terebê approved of it: said she is quicker and more delicate than m—’”
Ariadne almost jumped over him to take the journal from his hand, her cheeks ablaze. One of the corners of his mouth curled up, and his long arm held the notebook in the air, far from her reach.
“Not that one.”
“Fair enough.” Quaint returned the open journal. Erik had drawn her on the page: a messy black bob cut a little above her jaw, tired eyes, and an unfitting girlishness in her cold expression. She has the blackest eyes! said a little note near her face. “Too bad. You look sweet there.”
“We both have our secrets.” Ariadne got up with the notebook in her hands, and offered a quick smile. “Good night, Quaint.”
Later, she dreamed she was back at Erik’s office, and all his belongings were still there.
Everything was in its place: the desk, the cabinet, the shelves, everything but him.
Ariadne sat down, feeling the leather cover of one of his Russian books, and stopped reading when she felt someone breathing behind her, blowing warm air against her neck.
A man grasped her by the jaw and forced her to stand. Quaint, she tried to say, but he opened a mouth full of teeth. Qianyi.
Quaint ignored her pleas. Instead, he smelled her, brushing fangs against her skin and ripping her shirt like it was made of paper.
His nails left pink marks on her breasts, and his teeth sank into the smooth flesh of her neck, drawing blood that dripped down her torso in crooked lines.
He pushed himself between her legs, biting again.
Qianyi, she said, not knowing what it meant.
Quaint was eating her, but she didn’t feel pain; she wanted him inside of her, again, again, slamming her body against the desk.
A hairpin fell, metal clinking against the flooring, and his nails scratched her hips.
The bites moved on to her belly, the muscles of her inner thighs, the softness of her groin. Quaint climbed over her, face dripping with red, and she hugged his waist with her legs, her real legs.
Ariadne woke up, and the name was still trapped on her lips: Qianyi.