Mortal Sins

SEVEN

IN the fresh light of an early summer morning, something hovered on the wide front porch of the two-story house, waiting. It hung near the door, remembering walls and that doors need opening, but not how to manage the trick.

The man was inside the house. It knew that without having any idea how it knew, nor did it wonder at its knowledge. Questions, curiosity, thought . . . none endured long in the constant fracturing that was its reality.

Cold, cold. So cold. It knew how to gain warmth; dimly it remembered that lesson and the bliss, the sheer joy of heat. For a little while, it had thought it was fixed. Freed. For a little while, it had remembered.

Something had gone wrong. What? It didn’t know, couldn’t hold on to the thought or what passed for memory, not with bits of itself breaking up, always breaking up, like ice chips fracturing under pressure. But it knew—without knowing why—that to be warm again, it would have to leave this house.

It didn’t want to go. The man was inside. The one who knew it. It wanted, needed, to wait here, wait for the man to come out the door. If it could be close to him again, maybe it would know . . .

It no longer remembered what was missing. What it needed to know.

The howl of anguish was silent, a shuddering despair too great for its shredded being. It quivered and lost track of doors and houses and whatever had held it in one place.

Deep in the darkness of its fractured self, it heard The Voice.

Maybe the calling had been there all along; maybe it was newly come. It only knew the loathing and fear and promise of The Voice.

The call would grow louder, until it could no longer resist. It had to escape. It had to get warm again. Once it was warm, it wouldn’t hear The Voice, and then it could remember . . . surely warmth would let it remember enough. Then it could find the man who knew it. Maybe it could ask the man . . . whatever it was it needed so badly to know.

Once it was warm again. Yes.

It skittered away from the house, searching. Resisting the need to return to The Voice. Warmth would protect it, provide for it—yes, it remembered that much: when it was warm enough, The Voice went away.

Once it was warm again, all would be well. Yes.

It glided down the street—lost, fragmented, starved. Picking up speed as it went. Warmths were everywhere, but at first it found only the small warmths. Some of those would let it in, but the small warmths weren’t enough. It remembered that. It needed more.

Come, said The Voice. Come, come, come . . .

No! Frantic now, it hunted. It had to find a warmth, the right kind of warmth, or return to The Voice. There were warmths nearby, large warmths in the houses it glided past, but they wouldn’t work. It needed . . .

Ah, there! A door, a door in that warmth! Not a physical door—it had forgotten physicality again, so didn’t note the distinction—but a door nonetheless. A way in.

Walls were barriers only when it noticed the physical. It slid through one now without being aware of the passage, focused on the warmth it tracked. It eased close, found the “door” it needed, and slipped through. And into the warmth.

The shock of heat, of self, was sweet beyond expression. Lost in the bliss of sensation—Arms, legs, skin! It had skin!—for some time it simply rode the physical without noticing the other things it had regained.

Memory, though not its own. And words.

Gun, it thought in surprise, remembering now what a gun was. Then, tenderly sharing the discovery with its warmth, it added more words: Gun, yes. We will get the gun and kill and kill.