Sleep with the Fishies

Part 3: Again with the Cult Stuff

     "I'm trying to judge your belief. And while I doubt your heart is pure enough to die willingly, you understand there is more to this world than the flesh and blood of mortals." The high priest got off his ass and moved to stand behind me with my tied arms, since they're apparently better company. I gave him the finger. He sighed. "When followers of the Great Dreamer are ready to join him, they remove their hands and all the filthy actions they represent. Heathen sacrifices need their entire arms removed to achieve the same cleansing. I think we can find a halfway point for you." There was that typical shink noise of something being unsheathed.

     "The fuck are you—" My brain caught up. I planted my feet again to launch myself at him, right as an icy stake impaled me through the elbow and into the chair's padding. Blood spurted down my arm. I spasmed uncontrollably, carving the stake through my flesh.

     I did what anyone would do. I screamed.

     "Good. Now stay still." Another shink.

     I felt the knife slip into my flesh just below my elbow, slide around the bones and snip snip snip through tendons like they were elastic bands. Unconsciousness had taken me by the time half my arm slapped to the ground.

     While my traitorous brain was on smoko, distant gunfire echoed into the chamber. The high priest startled from celebrating prepping another sacrifice (me). Breaking into a jog, the high priest made for the exit. A fist met him there, which very much shattered his skull with its brass knuckles. I woke just after that, so I got to see Hemming in a ballgown stride into the chamber through my colour-stripped gaze. Her gleeful expression dropped into something like shock when she saw me. As fever dreams go, I thought that was pretty nuts, so I barked a wild laugh. Then I caught sight of my limp fingers on the floor and vomited all over myself.

     Everything was very black and white, swaying, and tasting of my stomach for the next half hour. Later I was surprised Hemming didn't kill me immediately.

     And by later, I mean when I properly regained consciousness in the hospital. My arm-stump was swaddled in bandages. Could I regrow a limb? I'd never lost one before. Anemones could, as I'd learned when I searched them up to see what I could do. Always wondered if I'll turn inside out when I'm dying. That'd be fucking metal.

     Ah, shit, here comes the trauma.

     A whole day lost in the Ink Press, Barteal and Keng draped like coats, that horrible weightlessness of the crash just like when eldritch creatures lose you in your own mind. My arm. I could still feel the snapping inside my elbow, the elbow that was a pile of gore on the floor of that cave full of dead cultists.

     I remembered reliving how the theatre felt.

     When I gently touched my face, I realized I was crying. Weird.

     I did what I always do. I propped my head up with my now-only hand. "Hey, Typhon. What brings you here?"

     The detective jerked awake from the chair next to my bed. "Joanah!"

     "Howdy." I grinned. "So, what fun meds do they have me on?"

     "You're not on anything except your stupidity. You just lost an arm!" Typhon rubbed a weary hand across his face. "I'd finished being discharged when you wheeled in. What happened, Joanah?"

     "Misplaced my arm. How're your gross eyes feeling?"

     Screeech went Typhon's chair as he stood. "A whole day and not a word. I was in the hospital, not dead. I would've appreciated knowing you weren't either."