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Tenna closes the door to his flat behind him, not caring about the dripping garbage bag in his hands, leaking garbage juice and other unspeakable, unthinkable fluids onto his fine leather loafers and the plush carpet of his hallway rug. He doesn’t care though, this damn CRT is on a mission. A futile one. A meaningless one as desperate as his quest to remain relevant as the glow of his fame surely would set like the sun. But that’s not going to stop him from trying, damn it. He’ll put him back together again. One way or another. He has to, because there is a ledger to balance, and nothing left but the distant horizon. He must go. GO.
It was a chance meeting, in a gutter, like all those years ago . A vile echo of what had once been two shining stars in the sky together beneath glittering studio lights. Now one fading, and the other hopelessly extinguished and Tenna had been the one to unfortunately, horribly, discover that. He could have walked on past the trash bag, in the rain-soaked gutter. But among the scents of filth and rotting garbage, his nose had picked up a familiar scent. And his nose always knew, bloomed a flower out of the tip of it for one and only one other – He did not recognize the body in the gutter. He did not take the body home. He did not take the body to the long-closed off workshop, the sewing room layered in dust –
The body was on the sewing table before him. Black and red and rotten gray sludge oozing out of every empty orifice up and down head to tail, black slime that was once precious vitreous humor seeping from behind shattered yellow and pink lenses. He touches the corpse, with his bare hands and shudders. Cold, plucked flesh with only a few feathers clinging to the bare and exposed chest. Like a raw chicken served for dinner, yet unmistakably it was him. He’d recognize that little scar anywhere because Tenna was the one who left it there, right at the base of the body’s tail. He knew why it was there but the words escaped him. All that came to mind was pipis. A silly, nonsense catchall but it meant so much to him. Rotting, peeling. Exposing pale bone through too-delicate white feathers stale with rot and damp and mold and filth. He’s long gone. Extinguished. Beyond saving and yet why – why does Tenna still hold onto the mortal remains of who he once was? Clearly intended to be disposed of by whoever had done away with him, left him there to rot, yet…
Tenna lays him out, spreads his little arm-wings still with feathers clinging to plucked flesh. Tiny claws, chipped and snapped, split at the base. Who had done this to you, love? Perish the thought. No, Tenna wasn’t doing this out of love, but obligation. A debt to pay. A debt to the one that had helped him become the [Big Shot] he was. Was, was. No longer. Fading into obscurity. The rain pours outside and it’s raining here but it’s also raining somewhere else. Pitter patter on the dusty windowpanes, streaks of grime running in rivulets down into the gutter below. Pitter patter gutter gutter. Where he should have left this thing. These mortal remains. The empty shell of what once was. Tenna reaches out and rubs the tiny clawed appendage between his gloved fingers and for a moment, it’s like it was before. But he’s so cold. Only an echo remains. The CRT flickers, and hums.
The workshop was meant for garments. Bowties, specifically. Lovingly sewn together with tiny hands and packaged up with brown paper and tied up with strings. Favorite things. A happier place, from long ago. Meant for one thing and one thing only. Not for dolls, not for puppets, and certainly not taxidermy of rotting bodies. But he had to make do with what he had. Any longer and then –
There’d be nothing left.
He paces circles around the workshop in a frenetic dance, gathering what he can. Turning his boxes upside down and pulling open drawers, his stomach turning inside of him because he feels like he’s graverobbing, desecrating a sacred place. But he has a duty for this. Cloth, thread, foam, wire. A box knife with a yellow handle. It’s all he can find in here, that’ll be sharp enough to do the deed. Whatever he can. Anything, to put his beloved back together again. And gather those materials like building a nest he does, laying out each component around the tiny body on the table, like grave goods framing a corpse at its wake. Perhaps, this is the wake that he never got because he had just been thrown away, discarded like so much trash. Tenna stares, the CRT display of his face flickering, humming gently. Rain and the hum of his own body, and the deafening silence of the body on the table, looking up with those empty, cracked lenses. If only he could repair them, but nothing in this place could patch them back together again.
He'd flayed fish before, for dinner. Bought from addison markets, so fresh that he swears their eyes still judged him when he lopped off their heads. Box knife in hand, he slips the corner of the blade beneath the skin, and it peels back, but breaks. No good, the layer beneath rotten. It’s all rotten. He’s rotten, to the core. Just like Tenna. The corpse, on the table. And Tenna, too. Tenna was always going to be the rotten one in this sham of a relationship. For even daring do such a thing. Is there even anything he can salvage? What is he even doing here, doing such a thing. A desperate final act of love, as if he could make things right when they’d fallen so far to pieces? Angel above, he was such a fool. The metal handle of the blade digs into his palm but draws no blood because it’s useless and blunt. Cruelly. Because Tenna wants it to hurt, to mean something. Like the agony he had clearly suffered, before being dumped like trash. Like he didn’t mean something. Like he was no one.
Maybe he can save the skeleton. Fish flaying skills save him, a hail to the Queen and hope against hope. It is grim work, peeling the flesh from the bone, plucking what feathers remain and placing them in a misbegotten pile. But at least the bones beneath the layers of rotten, maggot-eaten flesh are sound. They’re usable. They’re all that’s left. As he works dutifully, the moon rises and falls and it goes from dark, to darker. Darker and darker still. Photon levels negative, as Tenna works in pitch-black, the body on the table bathed in the dim, pale glow of his screen. Fluid splatters. Leakage spills down the sides of the table, staining the cutting mat like it’s a morgue slab. Perhaps it is. But finally all that’s left is the bulbous head with its wilting nose, skin pulled tight. Hesitantly, Tenna removes the lenses over where he knows where the eyes should be and there’s nothing behind them. Just empty holes, where eyes once were.
Who did this and why? What kind of hateful thing, even in this dark place—
He picks and pulls, tries to open the braincase to remove what once held all the body’s memories, pure and foul, laughter, tears, a memory of a suitcase and pipis under an arm walking off into the distance and beyond –
The blade snaps and Tenna grips the sides of his case, smearing black rot and fluid all over himself. He wants to scream but no sound comes out.
He can boil the skull. He’ll have to boil the bones anyways, to preserve them. Make sure they’re clean. Gathering up the precious, hateful, disgusting, wonderful, empty space in his arms because there’s no body there, he didn’t bring a body home – Tenna goes to the kitchen, and runs a pot of water from the sink, and drops the bones in, skull on top, smaller bones on the bottom. Empty, fleshy sockets gaze up at him, bubbles pooling on scraps of flesh. Judging him. Asking him if this is what he really wanted. Tenna doesn’t know. It’s so strange, how Tenna never realized he was so small. Small enough to fit in a stock pot. He thinks he’s made dinner in this exact pot once, for –
Looking away, changing the channel from those memories, Tenna turns the burner up, and makes sure it’s at the lowest simmer possible. And then he sits down on the kitchen floor, listening silently to only the hum of his own screen, and the simmer of the bones in the pot. The distant patter of rain. It’s always raining, in this place. He cycles through channels. But nothing’s on. Test pattern, test pattern, weather channel. Cycling across his display until he returns to idle. Plain, glowing white. How long has it been? He’s not sure. Dissociated, like wading through static because none of this is real – he picks himself up, and checks the pot. Clearly it’s been long enough, because the bones inside are defleshed and ready to be degreased.
A half empty bottle of kitchen dish soap of all things is what he uses to strip the last remainder of organic meaningfulness from his hated beloved’s bones. Tipping the skull out over the sink and watching all those memories flow down the drain in a swirl of black and grey. Tenna gags, display flickering to a test pattern as he tries to keep it together and not lose his shit because what the fuck is he doing in this place. This is disgusting. This is wrong. This is honoring the one who he swore as his mortal rival. His greatest enemy. His only love. A pile of degreased bones drying on his counter. Or well, once drying. Now they’re dry, and he doesn’t remember when, because he’s been flickering through channels but it’s all static, all over again. Nothing on at this hour. Thankfully Tenna was able to find a bottle of lacquer in the workshop. To complete this next step of his grim work. Honoring those passed.
Brush in clumsy hand, he paints the bones in lacquer, one by one. They’re stained a hateful brownish-yellow, sullying that memory pure snow white he once nuzzled his nose into, over and over. Smelled like clean laundry and straw and now just chemicals and soap. But it doesn’t matter. Because he’ll put him back together, once more. Hop skip step and one more time. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, will put him back together again. Tenna sets the brush down, carelessly, staining his table. He’d been doing it raw on the kitchen table, smears of lacquer and loose bones everywhere. Some dry, fused to the table and he breaks them free, leaving behind imprints of what once was, stuck to the table. They’ll be there forever. Just like all those memories held in these lovely bones.
Back to the workshop, locking the door behind him and Tenna works furiously. The obsessive, manic-depressive process of rearticulating the skeleton. And beyond. Wire works well, for holding loose bone together but it’s stretch velvet and spandex that brings him back into one piece, layering fabric muscle atop articulated bone. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he is guided somehow, by some unseen force -- Building him from the bones up, flesh upon flesh up on fabric – fabric – fabric. It is him. Unmistakably so, in the fabric. In the flesh. It’s so soft, shaped like him. Just like how Tenna remembered.
Working frenetically, he patterns the skin with duct tape layer upon layer, and peels it back, marked with red and blue and black sharpie. Cutting out the fur in the right pile, he sews with shaking hands, the plucked feathers back into place. One by one. He doesn’t know how long he works, but he knows it doesn’t matter, because soon, he’ll return to him and it’ll all be okay. Everything will be right again because once the skin goes on, and the glasses are in place, it’ll be him. No one but him.
Loosely draped over the ”flesh”, the skin goes on top in layers of faux fur and real feathers, tacked into place by flexible fabric glue, then sewn down, painstakingly. He hopes it holds. A curved needle in Tenna’s large hands, blindly prodding at the tiny form in his lap. Just like the good old days before color television. His hand lingers, on a claw. No longer keratin but now soft cotton fabric. A mere doll’s mimickery of a thing that once held Tenna so softly back. But he’s real, he’s back and in the flesh,Tenna’s [Big Shot] and –
The last stitches, sewing up the seam on his belly so there’s no open raw edges. There’s an empty space inside, below the breastbone and in the pelvis. Tenna knows what to put there. He’s always known. Working like a madman, screen flickering and humming, a softly oblong blue pipis is sewn into the empty space in the doll’s belly, where it always belonged, and the seam is closed. The loop ends and Tenna gets off at the last stop, waiting, waiting. But tomorrow never comes and the moon doesn’t rise again.
The doll merely stares. Stiff, lifeless. Though painstakingly Tenna built him up from the bones and nothing else, there is no life in the doll. It is merely a cruel taxidermy of the one who once occupied this space. A mockery of a being long past and gone into the light. Because the only thing real inside is inert bone, stripped of even the memory of flesh. No SOUL. Nothing to fill the gap, to put the final piece in place. A hollow thing, that bends to Tenna’s will. Wasn’t that what he always wanted, though? No. Not like this. Never like this.
The rain patters on the windows outside, the light of the Dark World moon backlighting the doll, reflecting off cracked pink and yellow lenses. They were one of a kind, the only ones in existence. And no one, could ever put him back together again.
Tenna’s such a fool.