“Yes,” said leg. “Here is what we will do. You will go to the navigation center when he is alone and you will secure the door from within. When he asks you what you are doing, you will ignore him and release me and I will unfurl and kill him.”
“I do not want to be there when he dies,” said Hekla. “I do not want to see it or for anyone to guess I am involved. Find another way.”
Leg thought.
“Take me off in your room. Then I will unfurl, walk down the corridor, enter the navigation center, and kill him.”
“People will see you walking and see what you are and they will shriek and scream. No one must know I have you, leg. If they realize you are more than a leg, they will destroy you, and perhaps me as well. Think again, leg.”
Leg thought long.
“I will change myself,” said leg finally. “I will take on your countenance and in that guise I will kill him.”
“Can you do this?” said Hekla, amazed. “Can you become just like me?”
“Yes, and act like you, too. But only if you grant me permission.”
And so Hekla did.
As she watched, leg underwent a transformation, taking on first her height and figure and then the specifics of her features. In the end there was nothing to tell the two of them apart except that the captain was missing her prosthetic, and leg, in becoming captain, had thought to give itself what seemed an artificial leg.
When Hekla looked upon this perfect replication of herself, she felt a shiver run through her.
“Go,” she said. “Kill him.”
“I go,” said leg, and left.
Leg went through the door and out into the passageway. It walked slowly toward the navigation center, where Michael was. This was the first time it had been out of the captain’s quarters on its own. This was the first time it had been away from the captain since leg had found her. Leg enjoyed how this felt.
Leg arrived at the navigation center. Michael was there, and alone.
“It’s no use trying to convince me,” said Michael. “I won’t change my mind.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you,” said leg, and killed him. To do this, leg turned itself inside out and engulfed him, so that the blood, when it came spattering forth, would be hidden inside. Then leg released the exsanguinated body and turned itself right side out again. Inside, it was spattered with Michael’s blood. On the outside, the false Hekla looked clean and untouched.
And so leg killed Michael and left his body on the floor. Then it bent over the body and stared at it long and hard. Slowly it took on the shape and form of Michael, for once someone was dead, leg did not need their permission to become them.
Leg went back to the captain. At first she thought it to be Michael, since Michael was who it resembled. The captain drew back as leg came closer, afraid, until the moment when Michael’s features began to smooth out and leg became itself again. Then it folded up tightly and became her leg again, though now it was aslosh inside with a dead man’s blood. Wherever the captain walked, she heard it.
And after? Some believe that, once Michael was dead, leg was satisfied to remain as it was, hidden, the captain’s confidant. Others believe that leg acquired a taste for being human and did not want to give this up. At night, while the captain slept, it would take on her form or that of Michael and wander the ship. Occasionally, as a special treat, it would turn itself inside out and kill someone, and then it would dispose of the body, sometimes jettisoning it into space, other times incinerating it with a mechanism incorporated into its body. There are those who say that by the time the vessel reached the vast creature Hekla intended to hunt, leg had destroyed the crew manning the vessel and had begun on the passengers suspended in the storage pods. Only the captain and leg were left awake and alive, and soon the ship was destroyed and the captain killed.
And leg? Soon it reached its mature form and became snake-bodied with the head of a bony fish, as it had always been meant to do. It is no doubt out there still, swimming alone along a current of darkness.
4
Veins, Like a System
ESHANI SURYA
The doctor stands at the sink, filling a syringe with oil, viscous and strangely red-black. Finally, the liquid reaches the appropriate milliliter mark—a number Lane isn’t privy to—and the doctor tips the needle back and forth, watching the oil slosh a little and settle. Lane tightens his fist, trying to coax the veins there to grow starker. This procedure, early petrochemical therapy, is a benefit, not yet available to the public, offered to employees of the oil company where Lane is a manager. He massages the skin at his inner elbow.
Are you sure about this? Lane’s wife, Katherine, asks from her chair. She still has her coat on, and she twists a loose thread around her pointer finger.
It’s perfectly safe, the doctor says, even though Katherine might have been asking Lane. He sterilizes Lane’s skin. It’ll stimulate everything, keep it all running. Especially the organs.
Which organs? Lane asks.
Deep breath, the doctor instructs, and the needle jabs through the flesh. Heart, lungs, eyes. You’ll be able to see when you’re saturated.
Not in your eyes, Katherine says. Lane, not eyes.
It’s part of the procedure, Lane says.
Oil is where the money comes from. It’s how they buy their son, Ev, a new backpack when the old one is frayed, how they keep cut flowers on the dining room table instead of leaving the centerpiece empty. If there are lawsuits, the pelicans shaking their slick black feathers with despair, the whispers of colleagues in different states suffering from nausea, memory loss, Lane chooses not to play the poor
