Page 15 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“Where is she?” a cold voice asked from the bedroom.

Hands clawed at my ankles. My face smacked on floorboards as I was dragged front first over uneven wood planks through the larger hole.

In my room again, I rolled over and lay flat on my back, arms stretched over the floor as I gazed at the ceiling.

Her pelvis was gone.

I’d slept for three weeks and felt fine.

A man crouched in front of the hole in the wall, and I flopped my head to look at him when he inhaled deeply.

The man was Stag. I should wonder why he was here, but I wasn’t myself given current events, and perhaps I didn’t care much to know the reason.

I could see that the stench of decay made him more curious than revolted. He didn’t gag, and he didn’t cover his mouth. Stag peered into the elevator shaft to where my mother’s body was uncovered.

He glanced at me, and our gazes locked.

They locked and held, and only the undeniable horrors reflected in his look made me glance away. His gaze had told me that my mother was dead. That she was rotting. That locking myself in with her body appeared odd and terrible. His eyes had confirmed that my mother’s body was disjointed, another thing quite odd and terrible because the assumption was that I’d cuddled a rotting corpse and taken bits of her away.

“Yes,” I said in response, then I stared at the ceiling again. “Do you think you can arrange her a little nicer on the blanket I laid out? If I could get your help carrying her to…”

I didn’t know where dead bodies went. Where did dead bodies go?

He glanced back across the room. At Ox and Sand Cat? I lifted my head to confirm they were there, then let my head thump down again.

Men in threes, I steer clear of thee.

But I hadn’t.

And now it was too late.

Chapter Five

Imagine a sudden blindness to what is,

To what has been,

To what will be.

I could not. I cannot.

I will not.

They’d arranged her nicely on the blanket, then rolled her up. Sand Cat had carried her out of the shaft and still held her as we walked through the city. After a few words from Ox, the landlady and agents disappeared without further shout or slap.

All in all, aside from the burning question in my mind, the horrible situation had been sorted with impossible ease.

But where did dead bodies go? That was what I’d really like to know, for I had one last thing to do, and that was to bury my mother. She’d never told me how to do that part.

I walked behind Ox and next to Stag. Sand Cat followed behind. I hadn’t asked where we were going. When Ox dismissed the agents and landlady, it became clear they expected me to go with them.

How did the trio know to come? Discovering where I lived wasn’t implausible—Ox could have followed me home after all—but why at that particular moment did they come? Then to handle everything so smoothly, as if they sought to help me. I felt certain they’d caused my three-week slumber, and yet a three-week slumber didn’t exist unless it were a coma, and even a coma required food and drink. Logical rules didn’t allow for the happenings and horrors of my situation.

And so I didn’t ask those questions because I didn’t want those answers.

I just had one question in need of answering.

We arrived at the skull’s apartment building. Two twisted statues now decorated the outside door. The beasts’ mouths were wide in a toothed yawn, and I could imagine their howls would be the exact sound of my aching heart. Beautiful, really, if one chose to see past their initial grotesqueness.

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