From the book What the Giants were Saying
David Rix
1
Cal pinned the tattooed girl's skin to the small artist's canvas and stood looking at it, a tear trickling down his cheek. The room was still drifting with a faint smoke the tang of burnt meat from where he had sealed her flesh.
Feather, darling, he whispered, gently sliding his arms around her and hugging her, Are you there? Are you alright? He sobbed once and hugged her closer. She was barely conscious and made no sound of response.
To him her flesh always felt more like water than meat. As if at some point she had melted away inside as if some tragedy had dissolved her flesh to tears.
Now limp and wrecked she felt more like water than ever. He heavily ran a hand over her body, following again the maze, reading again the stories that were engraved there. Reading at least until he came up against the huge hole he had cut in them. It looked larger now, the flesh cooked and sealed and there was still a hint of burnt meat about it. It sat in the middle of her tattooed skin like a doorway a doorway towards yet more stories inside her. Or maybe to something more. That was what he hoped, at least.
Cal ? she murmured feebly.
He leaned over her.
You ok?
I don't know, she said, her voice hitching. What did you . . . why . . . my god?
He looked at her. She looked as though she never quite got enough to eat, and what she did get didn't do her much good. But at the same time there was a wasted and fractured beauty about her, her white skin and almost white hair, contrasting sharply with the tattoos on her skin. Over her entire body they ran from the nape of her neck, down her back, her chest; around her buttocks and hips, and down her legs to a trailing end round her ankles. She was a labyrinth from top to toe, and amid those endless intersections, all the stories of the world were written.
I had to, he said simply. I had to cut the stories.
She turned away and closed her eyes, her lips trembling.
What the Giants were Saying copyright 2005 by David Rix