no matter what you say, no matter what you do.
Thirteen days after the last time he saw sunlight, Henry Jekyll calls Steven Bisset.
The little white card is long gone, ashes or compost by now along with the chemical he destroyed, but he knows the number without thinking. No memory or matter is ever really destroyed, it just waits in soft blank limbo, a camera lens dressed in gauze. He closes his eyes and tells himself there is no other way, that it is worth selling his soul to get back his heart, and waits for that brisk efficient kind voice, the voice of the devil on a not-particularly-good day.
We're sorry; that number has been disconnected and there is no new number.
Oh. He doesn't know whether or not to be comforted that even the memory he isn't doling out like a fucking time share condo is faulty. One more time.
We're sorry; that number has been disconnected and there is no new number.
This can't be happening.
Again, and this time, his fingers are shaking.
We're sorry; that numb--
If you told him he was talking out loud, he'd never believe you. "Someone--"
We're sorry--
"....please help me."
In all of this he has never cried- he hasn't cried since he was 12- and he doesn't cry now. He holds the little black phone in his hand, shiny and sturdy and completely unable to help him- and then he smashes it into the desk in front of him, once, twice, again and again and again until he feel something in his hand break and that almost hurts enough, again again until the plastic shatters, cracks, falls into useless pieces on the floor with a clatter of hideous finality.
And then there's only silence.
The little white card is long gone, ashes or compost by now along with the chemical he destroyed, but he knows the number without thinking. No memory or matter is ever really destroyed, it just waits in soft blank limbo, a camera lens dressed in gauze. He closes his eyes and tells himself there is no other way, that it is worth selling his soul to get back his heart, and waits for that brisk efficient kind voice, the voice of the devil on a not-particularly-good day.
We're sorry; that number has been disconnected and there is no new number.
Oh. He doesn't know whether or not to be comforted that even the memory he isn't doling out like a fucking time share condo is faulty. One more time.
We're sorry; that number has been disconnected and there is no new number.
This can't be happening.
Again, and this time, his fingers are shaking.
We're sorry; that numb--
If you told him he was talking out loud, he'd never believe you. "Someone--"
We're sorry--
"....please help me."
In all of this he has never cried- he hasn't cried since he was 12- and he doesn't cry now. He holds the little black phone in his hand, shiny and sturdy and completely unable to help him- and then he smashes it into the desk in front of him, once, twice, again and again and again until he feel something in his hand break and that almost hurts enough, again again until the plastic shatters, cracks, falls into useless pieces on the floor with a clatter of hideous finality.
And then there's only silence.