Chapter Twelve
The Skin Scribe
Christian woke to the sound of dripping. Not water—something thicker. Heavier and wrong with a haunting rhythm to it.
TAP-TAP-TAP.
He was sitting upright; wrists bound to the arms of a rusted lab chair. The metal beneath him was sticky with dried innards from someone’s body. Even the room smelled of death. Christian tried to free himself, but veins uncoiled from the chair’s joints and tightened around his wrists and ankles like a jealous lover’s embrace.
Each tendril pulsed in time with his heartbeat, drawing him deeper into the chair’s embrace.
When the final restraint locked into place, the boundary between flesh and metal dissolved. The room inhaled, and Christian inhaled with it. The chair accepted him—no longer a separate being, but a living extension of its design.
Walls throbbed with his pulse. The ceiling unfurled into spirals that mirrored the rhythm of his breath. The room and his body moved as one, indistinguishable and… alive.
Christian swallowed a rising scream. “What… where—” he stammered.
A single light swung overhead, its bulb encased in a glass jar filled with murky fluid. The glow was jaundiced.
“Christian,” a voice drifted out of the dark. “Awake at last… good. We have much to write.”
A figure slid into view, gliding rather than walking. He was wrapped head to toe in strips of skin, each piece stitched crudely together with black thread. The flesh was still wet. His face was a patchwork of mouths and eyes. This mysterious person sounded human, but it was hard for Christian to tell just by first glance alone. He looked like a skin mummy.
He carried a quill carved from sharpened bone.
“The tunnels brought you far,” the Scribe said. “Now we must begin your gospel.”
Behind him, a conveyor belt groaned to life. Bodies—half-alive, half-dead—slid past on metal slabs. Their backs were flayed open, skin peeled away in long, curling sheets. The man reached out with surgical precision, tearing a strip free from one of them. The victim didn’t scream. They only twitched, eyes rolling back as if their soul was already gone.
Christian realized they all looked familiar. Christian’s breath hitched. He recognized them from the passages he’s read, at least some of them: the whore, the killer, the patients, lost souls…
“No,” he whispered. “This can’t be…”
The man turned toward Christian, holding the dripping sheet of flesh like parchment. He dipped the quill into a jar of black fluid.
“Everything is real here,” the Scribe murmured. He titled his head looking back and one of the mouths on his face smiled. “I am the Flesh Scribe. The one who records the debts of the damned. Every soul that descends here must be catalogued. Every sin must be inked into the flesh.”
“Wait, is this… this where I meet him?”
“Possibly, but what makes you think you haven’t met him already?” the Scribe asked with a small chuckle. “Now, question one.”
Christian’s voice cracked as he cut the man off. “Where’s Mal? She said she’d take me to him.”
The Scribe tilted his head, one of the mouths on his cheek curling into a smile. “She already did. You are here. You are dead, obviously.”
The words struck like a hammer. Christian shook his head violently. “It’s confusing because I can still feel—”
“Pain?” The Scribe interrupted, leaning in closer. “That’s all that remains of you. Pain is the only truth left when the soul is gone.”
He dipped the quill into a jar of black fluid again, ready to begin. “Tell me, Christian. Why did you come here?”
The quill slashed into the flesh. As the Scribe carved notes, Christian could hear the sound of the wet rips—like he was practicing calligraphy on a raw piece of fruit.
“I wanted to die,” Christian began, tears burning his cheeks. “I thought I could trade my soul for hers. I thought I could bring her back.”
The Scribe stopped writing. “Trade? There are no trades here. Only debts. And yours was collected long before you arrived.” He leaned close, the stench of old blood and smoke filling Christian’s lungs. “You killed her, Christian. Every pipe, every needle, every lie you told her was a blade of the razor she used to slit her own wrists. She didn’t drown in her blood in that bathtub… she drowned in you.”
Christian’s body convulsed. “Please… stop…”
“Stop?” The Scribe’s tone sharpened. “You misunderstand. This is not punishment. This is redemption.”
Christian’s breath hitched. “I didn’t do that—I didn’t—”
“All men wear two faces,” the Scribe said. “The tunnels only honor the latter. Now remember, there is no denial here. Only truths and lies. Contrary to popular belief, the lies will not set you free in this hell.”
The quill moved again, carving truths into the strip of skin.
“Please… I just want to see her. Mal. She said she’d take me to him,” Christian begged.
“Ah. Mal.” The Scribe paused. “She came here to serve, not to seek forgiveness.”
“The book I read,” Christian whispered. “Those weren’t us in there? The killer? The whore?”
“People you knew only because of your journey. No, Christian. I’m afraid you are merely being written as we speak.” The Scribe explained pointing the bone quill to the flesh before him. “There are…”
He shifted his weight as if to look Christian in the eyes, but it was hard to tell which eyes he was using.
“There are things which make sense in your normal, earthly mind but you need to realize here there is no time and space. Only the value of suffering and once you accept that then you will find peace.” The scribe moved on and stripped another piece of flesh from his next subject. “Now, next one. How many people have you ever killed?”
“From the perspective you gave…” Christian felt his tears slip past his cheeks. “One.”
The Scribe tapped his palms together as if to congratulate Christian for his first hurdle. “Truth. Awe, yes. Now to question three, why did you kill your wife?”
Christian’s breath hitched. “I don’t like how that sounds. I didn’t like… you know…”
“To be clear, there is no gray. Black and white. That is it.” The Scribe paused. “You really don’t you were the name she cursed in her dying breath?
“I put her through hell. I used her, like I did everyone else in my life,” Christian’s voice cracked. “Because of me.”
“Honesty is such a sweet thing, isn’t it.” The Scribe nodded slowly, approvingly. “At last.”
The conveyor belt stopped. The bodies hung limp, their mouths open in silent prayer. Christian looked down, remembering his life before clearer than ever now.
“Mal. My wife. She… she used to smile when I was sober. Or, at least I think she did. I can’t tell anymore.” Christian felt snot drip from his nose as more tear welled up. “I used her pain to feed mine. Every time she cried, I lit another pipe. I left her! I left her to die in that filthy room! I told myself she’d wake up, but she didn’t.”
Christian sobbed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
The Scribe dipped the quill one last time. “Then let me show you.”
“No. No, I don’t want to see. I can’t.”
Christian’s breath came in shallow bursts. Every inhale felt like swallowing rot.
“Please,” he rasped. “Let her go. Take me instead. I’ll stay here. I’ll write whatever you want. Just… let Mal go.”
The Scribe tilted his head, the stitched eyes blinking out of rhythm. “You misunderstand, Christian. There is no exchange. There is no mercy. There is only the debt.”
Christian shook against the chair, the veins binding him tightening until they cut into his skin. “You said every soul must be catalogued. Then take mine! Let her walk free!”
The conveyor belt halted. The bodies hung limp, their mouths open in silent prayer. The Scribe reached out and pressed a hand against Christian’s chest. The skin beneath his palm sizzled. “You are not a man anymore.”
Christian’s vision blurred. The veins binding him pulsed faster, feeding into the chair, into the walls. He could feel his blood being drawn out, siphoned through invisible channels. The Scribe dipped his quill into the stream pouring from Christian’s open wrist.
“Do you accept what you are?”
Christian sobbed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I am.”
“You are merely what he wants you to be. That is all.” The Scribe uttered. “Now to name you.”
He turned to the sheet of flesh on the desk, its surface trembling as if aware of what was coming. With a single, elegant stroke, the Scribe began to write in Christian’s blood. Each letter burned into the skin, glowing faintly before sinking deep into the tissue.
THE GOSPEL OF THE ADDICT
Christian screamed as the words seared through him, his body convulsing in rhythm with the quill’s movement. When it was done, the Scribe lifted the page, admiring his work.
“Now,” he said softly, “you belong to the book.”
The veins around Christian’s body tightened one final time, pulling him down into the chair until his flesh fused with the metal. His eyes rolled back, mouth frozen in a silent scream.
The Scribe placed the fresh page atop a growing stack of skin-bound gospels. The ink still glistened.
“Another chapter complete,” he murmured. “And the tunnels remember every word of it. Nothing is forgotten here, and we will make sure you remember every bit of it.”
Previously on the Worm Tongue Gospels….
or Start from the beginning…