The Vorrh

insistence. He looked again at her set, dead face; she was elsewhere, but the floor was being eaten away by the live hand’s independent labour. Then silence fell again. He dared not breathe, waiting for the hellish tattoo to start again, wondering fearfully at the life force that sustained its momentum.
    As he watched, he realised that her body was slowly coming out of its coma. It warmed and connected to the arm that was still working, the hand continuing to scratch with a violent motion, as if it contained her entire will. Its furious work had lasted for only a few minutes, but they had been the longest he had ever endured. Gull’s words about the hand’s strength came back to him, as did the insane, frail woman who had gutted herself, and the fact that the doctor had named Josephine as his most successful patient. The context of her success brought a sudden, inexplicable chill to his skin.
    Gull’s questionable ethics were in the half-lit kitchen with them, two slumped figures caged in a night of fear and guilt. Had his machine produced this? What would he tell Sir William about his prized patient?
    She was sleeping normally now, the black curves of her body glistening in a thin layer of sweat. He decided not to move or wake her, and instead crept towards her bedroom on all fours, pushing the light before him and trying to keep it away from his beard, which brushed the floor; he intended to fetch a blanket to cover her modesty. It briefly occurred to him that it would be more natural for him to be naked too: his animal posture would then complement hers; if nothing else, it would make an excellent series of photographs, two beasts crawling in one small enclosure. All manner of naked people could be caught thus, in fragments of motion; a zoo of measured humanity.
    He was about to stand when he heard movement behind him. She was across the room in a moment, standing over him, her scent overpowering, a purple musk of mammalian heat. Her eyes were luminous and locked on his. She suddenly lashed out at the candles, kicking them across the room. Now it was only her eyes that illuminated the shrunken space. She pushed her face into his, grabbing his hair and throat with massive force. He gasped, but was powerless to react. Her strength had become superhuman and all his instincts told him that, if she decided to, she could snap his neck in a moment. Their noses were crushed together, the glowing eyes staring point-blank into his. He could see nothing but the unfocused light; he felt nauseous and terrified. He tried to close his eyes, but it made him feel worse; the thin skin shrivelled under the intensity, and the glow passed straight through.
    They remained meshed together in the hideous coupling for only a few minutes, but for him it felt like suffocating hours. Suddenly, she fell away, peeling off into sleep on the cold, barren floor.
    He pawed at his eyes, which felt bruised inside. He was drained and trembling; it had all happened so quickly, each incident taking only moments, enormous quantities of focused energy burning for a few minutes. A few
minutes
. The spell of clawing had been shorter than the intense staring of her eyes… a few minutes! The sequence of minutes she spent in his machine: three, five, eight. It had worked, but it had been delayed! The flash of understanding and triumph was instantly snatched away by the thought of the next attack: he only had a few moments to escape or defend himself before she woke again and launched a full eight-minute strike.
    He scrambled to get up, his legs sliding wildly from under him. Dragging himself to his feet, he collided into the sink, sending a small wooden dryer of crockery crashing to the floor next to the prone sleeper. Cups and plates shattered and spun as he grabbed the door handle to the outside stairs and his escape. It was locked. The keys were in his discarded coat, somewhere in the studio, but where? Where had he dropped them on his drunken return? There was some moonlight, and he stumbled about in it, frantically searching. He heard her stir in her proximate sleep but did not dare to stop and look. He found the coat and thrust his hands into the pockets, fingers rattling for the keys. He was at the door when he found the empty gun. He had twisted the coat inside out and it clung to his arms. He savagely pulled at it and made it worse. No keys could be found, and his hands were trapped inside the knotted lining. Then she moved.
    He screamed as she