Author: Matt Forshaw

It will not heal because I pick at it. I peel back little dry threads of skin from the edges of the wound, and they unwind around its circumference like old, coarse rope. When the scabs on the surface thicken like dirty ice growing solid over a lake, I lift them up, finding edges I can get a finger nail under. Sometimes I look at it under a small times ten magnifying hand lens, and I marvel at all the textures and layers; sometimes it’s like a tiny, obscure bas-relief sculpture, other times some vast open top mine, excavated from a convoluted plain of skin, seen from far away and high above. I chart the healing process, as I delay it by my constant interference.

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Just another shitty, no stakes Damage night. Bunch of posers with the latest salve and designer scars. Come down to the Wallows from uplevel to spend half a night with us exotic scum, so very fucking legit. Take some full band simvids to parade in front of their friends back home, the ones who are too scared or too sensible to come themselves. They’re tolerated with varying degrees of grace – no one wants a dead rich kid on their hands after all, but there’s a lot of good mischief to be had short of that; scamming, robbing, beating, the occasional spot of kidnapping and my personal favourite, just plain fucking with ‘em. Maybe if we spent less time fighting each other over the scraps that drift down from uplevel we wouldn’t be in this mess.

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My arm disappears in a blaze of light and heat – that’s ultrawhite phosphorus for you – and I watch as the outline of my radius and ulna is described in glowing red before crumbling away to dust. I’d already slathered near on a whole pot of CSPA over my arm before holding the incendiary grenade tightly in my left hand and pulling the pin, and I was very pleased it was doing what it said on the tin, and I’m 1200 credits richer and I didn’t feel a thing, brilliant!

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Everything is very dark and I can’t stop moving walking scratching scratching hitting and my head hurts or it would if I could feel fucking SOMETHING but everything’s just empty emptying empty and slow and my mouth is full but can’t taste a thing then somewhere else where am I where is I what am I not am I everything tearing rending out and away and away away gone.