Body Surfing

the limbs below. Already, the muscles in arms, legs, diaphragm have started to atrophy. To decompose inside the girl’s skin.
    A thousand years ago Zhou Chunhua had comforted her younger brother Wong. Pain, she told him, was caused by a blockage of the vital force, qi . She taught him to see his qi as a river swollen with spring rains but blocked by debris. The river aches to flow cleanly but can only spread out, stagnate. Wong must visualize the flotsam breaking up, allowing the qi to resume its course. He must smash the dam of hurt.
    Broken humerus. Dislocated knee. Two cracked ribs, one of which had punctured the spleen. Septicemia would have killed her in three days, if the demon hadn’t shown up.
    Really, she should thank him .
    Wong took his sister’s advice to heart. Chunhua was comforted by the calm silence with which her brother lay upon his sickbed, but was shocked when, six weeks after the fire arrow burned off his face, she lifted the poultice and saw his beauty immaculate. Lips, cheeks, nose, eyes: all smooth, supple, flawless. She was even more surprised when her brother flipped her beneath him, pinned her body to the bed.
    Where does it go? he whispered into her ear.
    Chunhua didn’t understand. Where does what go?
    Rivers flow to the sea, but where does the qi go? After it has burst its dam. Where does it go? The rotting odor of burned flesh was gone. Wong’s breath smelled sweet as berries.
    Chunhua struggled against her brother’s weight. Wong, please. Let me go .
    I’ll show you , he hissed, and then he released his pent-up qi into his sister’s body. What happened after that is lost to history, lost to the demon as well. He has long since ceased caring what happens when he leaves his hosts behind.
    Consequences.
    Consequences are for the living.
    A score of bruises, abrasions, lacerations. The smallest injuries, but the most dangerous. A million bacteria and viruses circle the openings. Armies of macrophages are overcome by succeeding hordes of invaders; pus bubbles from the wounds like sulfuric sludge oozing from a fumarole. The smell of rot fills the hospital room, disturbs even the sleep of the girl’s comatose roommate. Death’s perfume is sour like spoiled milk: Patricia Myles wrinkles her nose and dreams her husband has left the carton on the counter after making his morning coffee.
    It will take days to repair her. To fight off the infections, heal the broken bones, cool the inflamed tissue of her spinal cord and ever so carefully reattach and recalibrate the shredded fibers, returning sensation and mobility to taffy limbs. But he will heal her, just as he healed Zhou Wong and Chinpukilla and Boris Petrovich Alushkin and athousand others, and then he will bring her to Jasper. Orpheus was denied even a glimpse of his Eurydice, but Leo is kinder than the rulers of Hades, understands that a society that has lost its faith but not its fear of God must continually be reassured. And so he will display Jasper’s virgin bride to him. Behold! Beauty restored like the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel! And Jasper will finally heed the demon’s call, or Leo will show him just what else can be done to his beloved.
    Only when the demon settles down to do his work does he notice the hymen. Perforated. Torn neatly along its seam like a chestnut cracked open to reveal the tender meat inside.
    “Why Michaela Szarko!” Leo laughs inside his host. “You lying little slut!”

2
    Q . lay flat on his back on the tatami floor of J.D. Thomas’s meditation room. The echoes of his breath rushing from his lungs still reverberated in the air, which is a fancy way of saying he’d just gone:
    “OOF!”
    Golden light streamed through amber panels in the windows; an enormous bronze Buddha looked benevolently from a shimmering gold-leafed alcove, along with bamboo-framed haikus rendered in delicate Japanese brush strokes. Q. wasn’t exactly noticing all this, however. He was more concerned with trying to breathe against the weight of the huntress’ foot on his throat. The Croatian woman’s stare was implacable. An impatient frown turned down the corners of her mouth.
    “You’re not concentrating. That’s the twentieth time I’ve taken you down today.”
    “Twenty-two,” Q. wheezed, “but who’s counting?”
     
    Heated voices had awakened Q. the morning after Leo’s attempt on his life. Making his way downstairs, Q. had found Lana and the doctor arguing at the breakfast table.
    “The boy came