Page 27 of A Most Abhorrent Vessel

I lift my hands to the light. Move them every which way. I wiggle my fingers. Stroke my nail beds across my cheek as I have so many times before. The stubble on my face scratches my skin. How many days passed while I was barely a man?

I stand to approach the mirror hanging over the hearth’s mantle.

My face looks distraught, maybe even crazed. But it is my face nonetheless, and there is nothing more exhilarating than seeing it reflected back.

Moreau is draped over the sofa again. Half of him glows from the fire’s dance; the other is shrouded in darkness. He looks like an old painting.

I want to laugh. I want to scream. I want to run through the streets. I fist my hands, take one deep breath, and contain it all.

“Tell me what you feel?” he asks.

“I’m hungry,” is the first thing that leaves my mouth. How brutish of me. It seems this ordeal has made me forget my manners.

“Delightful! Let’s find something edible, shall we?” He stands up and hands me the throw that was draped over the settee.

Realising that I’m entirely naked, I grip the fabric, mortified. But Moreau pays me no heed. He’s already halfway down the corridor.

I ignore the heat rushing to my cheeks as I wrap the throw around my waist. I look utterly indecent, but there’s nothing that can be done right now. At least the heavy red velvet gives me some sense of modesty.

The kitchen looks like it hasn’t been used since the burning of old St. Sebastian’s. By some miracle, we find a jar of preserved pears, a dusty bottle of elderberry wine, and a box of stale biscuits. Moreau serves everything on a tarnished tray as if it were a royal feast.

“I apologise for this meagre meal. I’m not in the habit of eating,” he says, placing a pear on a biscuit.

“I don’t mind. I’m grateful to be restored; I would eat anything right now,” I say, and mean it. I’m so hungry, I don’t even mind that the food might be older than me.

“I cannot imagine what it’s like not to feel. It must be the most cruel horror to exist in such a state.”

I nod with a mouth full of pears. Their sweetness is so cloying that their juice coats my mouth like honey. The biscuits are bland and dry, but following the pears, the texture is delightful. The wine tastes like spiced golden syrup, tart and fermented. It heats me to the core, packing my head in cotton.

I eat, delighted in every sensation that courses through me. When I look back at Moreau, the joy seems to have leached from his features.

He’s looking at my hands.

I hold them up.

A map of crimson roads criss-crosses over yellowed cotton.

I close my eyes.

No. It can’t be.

I look again. It’s fading. Fading so quickly.

Please, stop.

Every layer disappears as if washed off with turpentine. First, the veins, bright and strong, fade into the rawness of muscles.

Red and angry, they are determined to prove who the mightiest is on each hand.

Tendons glitter silver in the firelight, clinging to the bones with force, until they appear just as dull as ancient fossils.

There is no more heat. There is no more tightness in my chest.

I am but a pale imitation. A man only in shape, taking up nothing but space on this earth. But truly, I am no more.

“I’m sorry,” Moreau says sympathetically.

I shrug, then realise he won’t be able to see it.