The Sensory Thief Part 4

Part 4

The world tilted as the Thief pulled the final thread from the victim's screaming nerves. A sharp, white-hot burst slammed into his skull, and his knees buckled, which sent the Thief crashing against the blood slicked stone of the basement floor. Motionless for a long moment, his breath came in shallow rasps as he watched the light of the single bulb overhead spin in his mind. With a low groan of irritation, he forced his trembling hands to find the stone wall, and he dragged his leaden body upward until he stood on shaking, uncertain legs. He didn't look at his twitching victim strapped in the chair; he simply turned away toward the stairs. With each step beneath his boots, a haunting creak echoed that sounded like the cry of a child. Every step was agonizing, their thud vibrated throughout his hollow chest, his breath became ragged, that tasted like copper and exhaustion. Behind him, in the silence of the basement, the victim remained a broken instrument of flesh waiting for the next movement. With a final, desperate heave, the Thief dragged himself over the threshold of the landing and stumbled toward the heavy oak door at the end of the hall. He didn't look back; the harvest had drained him that left his own senses frayed and screaming for the quiet of the upper floors.

He pushed the door open with strength he didn't have, and the hinges letting out a squeal of pain that matched his swollen joints. The room was a clinical whitewash of emptiness and smelled of lavender and bleach. In the center, if the sterile room sat a Victorian crib that swayed with a slow, hypnotic creak. The Thief collapsed against the slats, his fingers trembling as they reached into the bundle of silk lace. There was no soft warmth of a child, only the unnatural pulsing of a mass.

A dozen stolen ears, stitched into fleshy mosaic, twitched at the sound of his approach. Then, a cluster of vocal cords throbbed and began to hum. Its cry was a horrid multi toned vibration of a thousand stolen voices trying to knit themselves into a single lullaby. The Thief closed his eyes as he leaned his forehead against the cold wood and reached into the crib.

His touch lost their cruel clinical precision and became soft and reverent. He lifted the heavy patchwork of stolen life and tucked the thing against the crook of his neck. His thumb traced the seam where a dozen different ears were stitched.

"Hush now, my little one," he whispers, his voice loving that vibrated against the mass of stolen skin.

He began to pace the room with a slow sway humming the same lullaby that the cluster of vocal cords sang. In this moment, he was a father tending to his child, trying to love a soul into existence from the scraps of his victims.

As the humming turned into desperate clicking from a dozen stolen throats parched for sustenance, the Thief didn't reach for a bottle or jar. Instead, with a shaky sigh, he pulled back the cuff of his linen shirt to reveal a roadmap of jagged scars. He took a small blade from his pocket, and with the practiced gentleness of a father preparing a meal, he opened a fresh vein.

The warmth spilled out of his wrist and flowed into the throbbing membrane of the abomination's many mouths. The Thief watched in a daze as his fleshy creation swelled, the stolen vocal cords shifted into a satisfied, low thrum. He pulled away just as the world started to tilt away, his head spinning from the loss of blood. He pressed a tender kiss to the patchwork of stolen skin and spoke in a slight slur in his drunken state.

"Grow for me," he whispered, his voice barely a ghost of sound as he tucked the mass back into its cradle of silk.

The Thief leaned down and pressed one last kiss to the hellish child.

"Sleep now, my sweet," he murmured in the silence, but then, a sharp, distant thud echoed from below. It was the frantic, clumsy kicking of the victim against the chair. The Thief’s entire posture shifted from a father's grace into a predator's sharp edge in an instant. A flash of annoyance crossed his tired face as he straightened his linen shirt and wiped his mouth against the blood-stained cuff. He turned toward the door, his eyes dark and clinical once more. The nurturing warmth was now gone, replaced by a dark irritation from the interruption.

"Silence the noise," his internal voice whispered. He turned toward the door, his shadow stretched long and thin across the wood floor. The final sound of the night was the heavy thud from his boots that stomped down the wooden steps back into the darkness.

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