Such Sights to Show You
Brian Shipley’s apotheosis into a being of eternal, geometric torment was, on the whole, a rather tidy affair. The artisans of the flesh, for all their talk of chaos and the rending of souls, had been considerate enough to put down dust sheets. It was a small detail, but it was the sort of thing Brian appreciated.
The experience itself was a bit like listening to an avant-garde orchestra where the first violin was playing a violent concerto of agony on your nervous system, while the percussion section enthusiastically tenderized your soul with mallets made of pure unadulterated bliss. It was confusing, transcendent, and frankly, a bit ticklish, especially when they got to the part with the skin.
And when the music finally faded, Brian looked down and saw the result. Oh! That’s where his skin had gone. It had been peeled back with the loving care of a master chef preparing a particularly prized fruit, then lacquered and re-stitched with gilded wire. Previously internal organs were now external, arranged in a pleasingly symmetrical pattern on his torso, and a hook on a long chain was embedded in his left palm. It was all very artistic.
The problem was… now what?
The Arcane Seamstress, a rather grand figure with a voice like a cello being played in a crypt, had just finished the final stitch. It had leaned in close and whispered, “Now, you are one of us. Go. Explore the furthest regions of experience. We have such sights to show you!”
Then it had vanished in a swirl of black leather and theatrical smoke, leaving Brian standing in a hallway that seemed to be paved with groaning flagstones.
“Right,” Brian said to the empty air. “Explore. Fine. But which way is HR?”
There was no answer, save for a distant, soulful scream that was probably part of the ambient noise budget. Brian sighed, a sound that whistled a bit through his newly exposed ribcage. He shuffled aimlessly in place.
He looked at the hook in his hand. Was he supposed to polish it? Was there a designated hook-sharpening station, or was it a bring-your-own-whetstone situation? No one had mentioned it in the orientation, which, now that he thought about it, had been less of an orientation and more of a prolonged kink session. Not that he minded in the moment.
He began to walk. The Labyrinth, he quickly discovered, was less a mind-bending maze of eternal torment and more a poorly-signposted industrial park. Corridors twisted back on themselves, archways led to identical archways, and the air hummed with a low-level dread that felt suspiciously like faulty fluorescent lighting.
He passed a Cenobite meticulously polishing the pins in its own head with a small swatch of velvet, muttering about tarnish and refusing to acknowledge Brian. Another, draped in chains, was trying to untangle itself from a third who had apparently made too sharp a turn. Brian wondered if that was a common workplace hazard and resolved to put up some warning signs once he was onboarded.
Trying to backtrack and try another way, he came across some poor soul left behind mid-torture, screaming with a kind of profound existential boredom that was far more chilling than simple pain. Brian muttered as he hurried on, “Well someone should get a writeup for that. You can’t just go around leaving important projects half-finished and expect someone else to pick up the slack!”
A strange, pleasant tingling started in his hook hand, an insistent little twitch that seemed to be pulling him back towards the screaming. He ignored it, with the same determined effort it took to ignore a ringing phone during dinner. After wandering for maybe days, he finally saw a creature of immense gravitas with its lips sewn shut. It nodded at him, almost friendly, and Brian’s heart visibly leapt with excitement.
“Excuse me,” Brian said, trying to sound polite. It was difficult to gauge the correct tone when you were wearing your own pancreas as a brooch. “Yeah, sorry to bother you, friend. I’m new. I was just wondering where I’m supposed to report?”
The creature stopped. It communicated only through portentous slow gestures. After a series of movements that seemed to be some sort of elaborate introduction, it slowly bowed. Then it raised a single, bloodless bone finger, pointed it at Brian’s chest, then at its own silent mouth, and finally towards the ceiling, as if solemnly indicating the location of the executive washroom, or possibly a horrible truth that lay beyond mortal ken. Brian decided to bet on the washroom.
“Right,” Brian said. “So, that’s up, is it? Is there a lift?”
The creature just shook its head with an air of profound disappointment and glided away.
This, Brian was learning, was a common theme. Everyone he asked for directions just offered him a pithy, ominous-sounding catchphrase or some interpretive dance. He’d been told that “There is no escape, only sensation,” “Your suffering will be legendary,” and “We’ll tear your soul apart,” all of which were singularly unhelpful when all you wanted was to find out about your pension plan.
(There was, in fact, a pension plan, but it was notoriously difficult to enroll in. It required you to sacrifice your eternal hope, which most new recruits had already misplaced somewhere during the initial flaying.)
Eventually, he stumbled into a chamber that looked suspiciously like an administrative office. A long queue of tormented souls, clutching various bits of their own anatomy, snaked away from a desk carved from obsidian and bone. Behind the desk sat a creature made entirely of stitched-together scrolls of human skin. A small, neatly carved sign on the desk read: THE REGISTRAR.
Brian got in line. After an eternity or two, he reached the front.
THE REGISTRAR ruffled itself angrily, “Why are you in a line for the tormented?”
Brian cleared his throat, an echo of dry leaves skittering over bone. “Oh, I uh, was tormented? But the orientation wasn’t very clear.”
“Oh for fff…” THE REGISTRAR’s papery form seemed to curl in on itself with pure disdain and hissed, “New staff?” It took a moment, as if consulting an internal manual on dealing with idiots, before its voice flattened into a monotonous drone. “You are a holy angel of suffering, an avatar of unfathomable sensation, the tormented are beneath you except for your tender ministrations, blah blah blah and so on.”
“Right, okay, so I was hoping you could help…”
“Name?” THE REGISTRAR interrupted, without looking up from the paperwork it suddenly turned its attention to.
“Brian Shipley. I have a library card to prove it.”
“Configuration?”
“Sorry?”
“Your Configuration,” THE REGISTRAR said as though exercising divine-tier immense patience. “The specific arrangement of your flesh and torments. Are you a Tier 3 ‘Visceral Geometer’? A Class B ‘Epidermal Artisan’? I can’t assign you a damnation sector without a Configuration Code.”
“No one gave me one,” Brian said, pausing uncomfortably. “They just gave me this hook.”
THE REGISTRAR looked up, disgusted. “No Configuration Code? Did you even fill out Form 37B, ‘Declaration of Final Agony’?”
“I don’t have a Form 37B.”
“Well, you can’t get a Configuration Code without a 37B,” THE REGISTRAR sighed. “Next!”
“But how do I get a 37B?” Brian pleaded.
“From your assigned sector supervisor, of course,” THE REGISTRAR said, turning to the next soul in line. “Name?”
It was at that precise moment that a bell chimed. A strange, insistent pulling sensation emanated from his navel, which was now located somewhere near his left shoulder. The world dissolved.
He materialized, with a sound like tearing silk, in a dusty attic on Earth. A teenager with bad skin and a t-shirt for a band Brian had never heard of was staring at him, his hand still on a small, ornate puzzle box.
“Whoa,” the teenager breathed. “It… it actually worked. I am ready to know the pleasures, demon. I have such sights to…”
Brian, acting on an instinct he didn’t know he possessed, flicked his wrist. The hook didn’t just fly, it danced. It unspooled its chain with the glee of a released spring, performing a delightful little pirouette around a dangling lightbulb for pure showmanship. The summoner laughed, clapping his hands with naive glee.
The hook embedded itself in the teenager’s chest with a surprisingly gentle thump. The boy, instead of screaming, let out a delighted gasp. “Yes! More!”
Brian stared, overwhelmed by the awkwardness of the moment. This wasn’t in any user manual he could imagine. He gave the chain a tentative awkward tug, like trying to start a lawnmower he suspected was haunted.
In response, the teenager’s left arm twisted gracefully, bones softening and reshaping themselves into an elegant spiral of flesh that ended in a gently weeping eyeball. A part of Brian’s new consciousness began to hum with a warped artistic joy. It was beautiful! The lines! The symmetry!
“Oh, dear,” said the other, much larger part of his brain, the part that still worried about tracking mud on the carpet. “You’ve voided his warranty. And you don’t even have a 37B!”
“Is this it? Is this, is this the pleasure?” the boy gurgled, as his other arm began to unravel into a ribbon of skin.
“Right! Yes! Well, uh, almost!” Brian stammered, jiggling the chain in a panic. “Just needs a bit of… calibration!”
The jiggling was a mistake. The boy’s torso blossomed open like a carnivorous flower, his ribs curling into delicate, ivory petals around a chorus of singing lungs. The sight was breathtaking. The sound was quite like a bunch of soggy poundcakes having an orgy. The mess was unbelievable. Brian berated himself for forgetting the dust sheets.
He felt a wave of pure sublime ecstasy warring with a tidal wave of profound discomfort. He was an artist! He was a vandal! He touched the sublime! He had definitely violated at least three interdimensional health and safety codes! He knew he would be held liable for this, he just knew it.
Overwhelmed, Brian simply dropped the chain. The hook, apparently sensing the overwhelming incompetence of its new user, retracted with an air of immense disappointment. It neatly folded the singing, weeping, spiraling boy back into a shape that was roughly human-sized. Then it hesitated a moment, as thought waiting for some sign from Brian that would never come, before discourteously compressing him into a dense cube of shrieking flesh and artistic regret.
Brian sighed and fumbled with the chain, accidentally twisting the condensed teen like a meaty Rubik’s Cube. The hook almost shrugged in frustration, taking over to whisk the once-boy through the portal. It vanished with the finality of a bent and rusting filing cabinet being slammed shut.
Brian stepped out of the attic, the portal sealed behind him. On the street corner, he saw one of the Labyrinth’s designated caretakers. He knew this instinctively, though the man’s profound haggardness and aura of cosmic seediness were also fairly large clues. Brian walked over and tossed him the puzzle box.
“Your problem now,” he said.
The man just nodded sagely, as though they shared an unspeakable secret, before slinking away into the shadows.
Brian stopped for a moment looking around, unsure of what to do before aimlessly walking away. He turned a corner and saw the cheerful twinkling lights of an ice cream van. He got in line. As he was handed his cone, a young woman in black lipstick and an ankh necklace approached him, her eyes wide with reverence.
“You… you are one of them!” she whispered. “I can feel it!”
Brian felt even more uncomfortable than with his first victim in the attic. Her gaze was hungry and, to his own horror, he liked it. “Oh, uh, hello.”
“Please show me! Show me such sights!”
Brian took a thoughtful bite of his ice cream. “Sights?” He gave a short, hollow laugh that whistled a bit through his ribcage. “Lady, I haven’t even been assigned a cubicle yet.”
The young woman didn’t hear him. She was cooing at his artfully arranged organs, fascinated by their glistening gleam and the weave of the golden thread.
He gestured vaguely with his hook. “The last ‘sight’ I tried to show someone ended up… well, let’s just say it wasn’t up to code. A lot of screaming, very non-compliant organ placement.”
He looked the woman up and down, a flicker of his newfound artistic joy warring with his innate sense of mild panic. “Tell you what. You find me Form 37B, and maybe we can talk. Until then,” he took another bite of ice cream, “I’m on my lunch break.”
He turned and walked away before she could react. He was aware of the young woman’s frustration behind him, like a pleasant static crackle against his new senses. He found, to his profound alarm, that he didn’t dislike it.
But his attention was immediately hijacked by the drip of his cone. He stared at the tiny black fleck of vanilla suspended in the melting cream on his lacquered flesh. It looked… lonely. It looked like an unfiled report. He suddenly had a terrible, wonderful idea for a new kind of art, a filing system that combined suffering, dairy, and a highly efficient system for tracking lamentations in triplicate. It would be a truly beautiful sight, he thought. Such a sight to show!
