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She stood before him, and had no face nor body, just some sort of vague, wet shape against the blurred background. She had no features, no clothes, no fully formed limbs, no detail at all, and yet he knew who she was, because she was one of the things he hated the most in the whole world. And she didn’t move, just keeping her wordless, thoughtless, eyeless silent staring as she oozed and dripped with mud, blood, saliva and pestilence. The floor under her was a mess. What was supposed to be her chest didn’t rise and fall softly. He remained in front of her. They were still. And then he grabbed her forearms and threw them away. “TU!” He slammed her against the wall - and they said rage makes one blind, but he knew that was bullshit, for never before had he seen more clearly. “TU!” He threw her around, and she didn’t react. How could she? Just a spineless horror made of soaked earth, that’s what she was, how could something like that move? How could it have a brain, a will, a heart? “COME HAI POTUTO!” He tore her foot away with his own teeth. It was dry and splintered like broken cardboard. He didn’t question how mud could taste like wood. “CAGNA CANNIBALE!” Something hit him. A voice called to him - Eska! Jesus fucking christ, stop that! - but his ears heard the name of a dead bastard being said by a woman, so he turned and hit her back, feeling foamy drool slip down his chin. He didn’t question how she could be behind him. “PUTTANA!” He wrapped his hands around her neck, and they dug in the fetid liquid until they grabbed flesh and bones that he could hold and squeeze, and squeeze he did. She held his wrists fearfully as she tried to break free. He didn’t question how a creature with no lungs could be gasping for air. “MI HAI LASCIATO SOLO!” But she had many limbs all of a sudden, and he found out only when they pinned him to the ground, on his stomach, so he couldn’t interfere, so he couldn’t fight. But he could yell, and so he kept doing. He didn’t question how from her single mouth could leave so many different intonations at once. “MI HAI LASCIATO A MORIRE!” He struggled and struggled and struggled, animated by desperate fury. He kicked and jerked his head back and tried to hit her and bite her. He could barely move. He didn’t question how muddy wetness could instead feel like the fleshy weight of about six people on him. “A MORIRE!” She held his arms back, and his legs too, against his spine, restraining him as much as she could, thousands of tones and words curling all around his ear and creating an overwhelming echoing well of hell. He spat on the floor and screamed. He didn’t question why he could recognize the voices. “COME UN CERVO NELLA NEVE!” She was dripping over him and coating him like shapeless puke frosting made out of cement, trying to incapsule him in a greyish, greenish indestructible coat. Some of it fell in his mouth. He didn’t question how whatever that was could taste like blood and cardboard. “LURIDA STRONZA!” The pressure kept coming, anchoring him down, driving him madder with every single second it tried to subdue him. His head was shoved against the floorboards to keep him from moving it; he jerked away from the grip and growled. He didn’t question how he could still shout with his mouth filled with drool and Heaven knows what. “PUTTANA!” Silenzio, she whispered, Non far incazzare tua madre, and although he couldn’t remember how she sounded he heard her, and it felt as real as the bones sustaining him now pressed against the floor, and that was too much. “PEZZO DI MERDA!” He didn’t question how her voice could reach him through grime and diseases.
"TI ODIO!” And slowly, painfully slowly, he wore himself out. He panted, whining like a dog with a broken leg. His senses blacked out as he got calmer; he barely felt his body being freed, checked, lifted, gently taken away. The thick sepia cover pulled over his eyes faded slowly, and once his back assured him he was on some sort of bed, he jolted up.She wasn’t there. She had to be there. She had to be somewhere around, choking him with her viscid caricature of a figure. But there was only Niamh. And Niamh was pressing her hand on his chest very sweetly and trying to get him back down, speaking softly (Niamh screamed and shouted and yelled, but he’d never heard her voice so low, and it was very sweet) like in a dream. “Dov’è mamma?” he asked feverishly, confused, eyes trailing all over the forniture to find the monstrous piece of shit.“Sh, sh, it’s fine.” the woman whispered to him, a worried look on her face as she held his hand protectively, “Ye must hav’ seen some seriously tough shit, hav’n’t ya? It’s ok now, I’m here, you can calm down.”“Mamma non c’è?”“Sh, sh, it’s fine, relax, lay down.”“Non c’è?”“Eska, Eska, look at me.” She cupped his masked face in her hands, looking deep into his eyes: “I’m here. It’s just you and me. No one else.”“Nessun altro?”“No one else.” Niamh held his head close to her heart, kissing the wild uncombed hair. Her hand rubbed Eska’s back slowly, in a pattern of gentle circles. “No one else.” she repeated, possibly even softer, as if to ease his fears.The factotum took deep breaths and looked around. The infirmary. They were at the infirmary. Why. Bad hallucination? Yes. That was what happened. Just a bad hallucination. So she wasn’t there. Good. Why was he there? His tongue rubbed slightly on his palate: the taste of cardboard filled his mouth. Oh. Must have bitten a cutout. So that bad. Then there was a reason for the many limbs pinning him down and the throat he tried to strangle. He listened to the woman’s heartbeat. It thumped gently in his ears.He tried to adjust his breathing to follow it. Niamh laid another kiss on top of his head: “If whatever ye saw shows up again, I’m gonna feckin’ slap it all the way down t’ hell hard enough to shove it up its own arse.” she promised, “Ok?”“Okay.”“Ok then.”“Okay.”“Wanna lay down? Rest a little?”“No…”“Come on, take a nap.”Eska held onto her tighter, refusing to let go with a whine. She was soft, and warm, and sweet, and trying to help him, and smelled of good things that he should have know since way too long ago, but was denied for reasons that nobody ever bothered telling him; she was all those things he didn’t know he missed terribly.Niamh sighed and gave up on trying to make him lay down again and hugged him back, still kissing his stupid bastard head and patting his spine gently. The factotum closed his eyes and rubbed his face very carefully against her chest. “Sei tu mamma, sì?” he asked softly.“Hm?”“Quella vera?”Niamh smiled: “Eska, I love ya, but I can’t understand a word yer saying.”“Mamma.” he repeated, raising his eyes up to meet hers: “Tu sei mamma.”“Yer ma?”“Sì. Tu sei mamma.”“I’m yer ma? ‘S that what yer sayin’?” Niamh gave a short, hearthy laugh: “Eska, sweet Jesus, I can’t adopt ya right now. I don’t ev’n have the papers! And also me shift isn’t done, so I can’t go get them.”Her smile faltered with a speed to rival that of a cheetah: “Fuck, I need to get back t’ work.”“No!” Eska protested, “Resta con me.”“You want me to stay with ya?”“Hm.” The staff manager fell deep in thought for about five seconds. “If I carry ya to me office, can I work?” The langly half-dead spawn of Satan simply wrapped around her tight and rested his head on the woman’s in a way that allowed her to see the path she was walking on, murping positively. Niamh stood up with no effort at all and started making their way back down while petting the large mistake of nature she lovingly held in her arms. “Wait, we don’t actually have adoption papers here at the Studios, do we?”“Hm.”“Ah, goddamnit.”