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Something then triggered within me---a culminated volcano of insanity erupted under the knowledge of the abominable threads still being there. The menace of the impious fabric had at that moment devoured all control I had ever had in life. I disregarded my son and any love I felt towards him. I left the bounds of care and qualities of fatherhood. All that made me human fled my wholly presence when I placed my free hand upon my son to hold him steady and then ripped my attached hand from his back.
My son screamed a fowl plea, but it was not pain that caused it. He could feel the vibrations sent through the cursed threads attached between us as they extended under my tow. Instead of coming loose, the threads elongated, and as they did so, my hand---then my arm---began to unravel as if I was some poorly sewn toy. Flesh uncurled and blood fell like rain. My body in its entirety had been manipulated into a construction of thread, and it took me the loss of my entire hand and forearm’s skin, muscles, and tendons before I realized what was happening and stopped my motion. The skeletal remains of my hand fell limp.
I was then the one that screamed, harshly and absurdly, crying out for some form of reverence to save me from the despair and monstrous suffering. And yet, even amongst my sudden misery and panic, I at once understood the sudden look upon my son’s face as he turned to see me; I knew his intentions. I turned my scream to him, pleading with him, begging with him, not to run away from me---but he did.
His own panic tore a nightmare through his mind, causing him to flee the grotesqueness of my state. As he ran, so the threads followed, taking more of my skin and inners with him---my elbow, my bicep, parts of my shoulder and neck. In utter oblivion of affliction, I grabbed the threads with my other hand, stopping the horrible unwinding.
It then became my son’s flesh that gave way. When I grabbed the threads, they briefly became taut, transferring the tension to the roots on my son. With the stress and his forward motion, a heap of his flesh pulled away and became further extensions to the thread. He fell to the floor.
Losing blood by the second, I crumpled to the ground myself. A crimson pool expanded about me as I quickly slid into unconsciousness. The shallow, helpless screams of my son echoed along with me into the darkness.
I awoke to the clapping and giggling of a small creature prancing around me in my home. Its face was smooth and contained no eyes, ears, or nose. The mouth upon it ran thin, but curled and gnarled in a haunting smile. As clothing, it wore a gray tunic and strange brown shoes.
The creature came to me in my arousing. It placed its mouth against my ear and whispered to me extraordinary and unforgettable things. It explained my place at the crossroads of worlds; where some beings felt pain and others experienced pleasure; where some beings saw light and others found darkness. I learned of things benign and malevolent, and things uncouth and terrific. I learned of the device it left for me and my success in opening it. And then, lastly, just before it vanished, it whispered in glee of the reward I had been given---the gift that I so deserved. From that moment on, I only heard its laugh trail away into the distances of infinity.
Blood stuck to me everywhere, my shirt was gone, and where the flesh that had been ripped from me once was, was the same yellow fabric I had found abandoned in my kitchen, sewn around my arm and hand until it met real skin upon my shoulder and neck. It was only a covering for I could not sense the arm or hand that was there; they were gone.
I turned to look for my son, but I could not see him. I called out to my son, but I could not hear him. My son was nowhere to be found.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I mourned for him, and as I grew weaker and weaker in my sadness, I fell deeper and deeper into silence until I could hear the beating of my heart. It pattered slowly and heavily, consistent and insistent. I listened to it for a long while, focusing solely on its sweet percussion, and in time, I noticed the beating of a second heart within me, and my sorrows passed away. This heart beat softer, lighter; this heart was my gift.
“Do not cry, my son. Do not cry. They too know what love is. The pain is but their greeting, it will not last forever.”
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