An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
They say the dead can’t speak, but they speak to you. Like the city does, or the para-natural statique transmissions of your beat, or the way the very nature of reality comes apart under your very fingers. You pluck them like a flower and feast, can-open the dead, because the dead have no need for secrets anymore. The flower’s in their mouths, and you swallow them slow, petal by petal, memory by memory.
It starts off simple. Unassuming. “Who are you?” and “Who killed you?” And then you ask the questions that everybody dreads: “Who am I?” and “Why do you remind me of myself?” Questions no one wants to answer, least of all you.
Here is your answer: You are a corpse simply going through the motions of living. You are rotten from the inside, extracting answers from the dead because you can’t find any within yourself. You can-open them. You can-open yourself. And then you close yourself up again because you can’t bare to see the rot inside.
You don’t have a flower for your dying mouth. There are no answers you can give yourself for what you’ve become. You are a corpse, but you’re still somehow living.
So you press your mouth against their lips. You swallow their secrets whole.
Sighing with unspoken relief, Kim tossed a question his way: “Are you back with us, detective?”
“…Keeping score.”
Kim blinked, glancing up from his camera, softly speckled with rain. “Did you say something?”
“Keeping score,” he repeated, a little louder. He tapped his finger on the halogenic RCM rectangle attached to his ledger’s clip, his gaze drifting roguishly. “Like the perforations. But—what is he keeping score of? That’s the question.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pig’s gone fucking mental,” the boy scoffed.
Harrier lifted his head and regarded Kim, frowning, his eyes still faintly filled with a glazed and distant residue. They flicked to Kim’s jacket, where he kept his notebook. After a moment of thought, wherein the rain began to come down harder, he held out his hand. “Can I borrow a pen? I need to write this down.”
“You wouldn’t need one if you hadn’t tossed your pencil.”
