Qebhet (coolwaters) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2020-07-07 23:25:00 |
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Qebhet was working late, which wasn’t particularly unusual for her. People died at all times of the day and night and somebody had to be ready to tend to them when they did. In some ways she preferred working like this, in the evenings and early hours of the morning when she had the building to herself, just her and her ghosts. Qebhet got on well enough with the rest of the staff, and they in turn were long accustomed to what they thought of as their embalmer’s eccentricities, but there was something freeing in not having to modulate herself in this place — in being able to slough off the constricting skin of Beti Panoub and give herself over fully to the work. Especially in a sensitive case such as this one. Qebhet felt it the moment she entered the cool room. It always reminded her of the smell of rot, seeping and putrid and invasive, though in truth it wasn’t a smell at all, existing somewhere beyond the realm of mortal senses. It congealed around one of the body bags like blood oozing from an open wound. This was the taint of isfet — of violence, disharmony, an upset in the natural order and balance of the world that was ma’at. That it clung so heavily to particular this body did not surprise Qebhet, given the terribly chaotic nature of the man’s death. A week earlier, forty-one year-old Oscar Reeves had been walking home after covering the late shift at a local convenience store. It had been close to 2am when he’d been attacked by a feral dog; an awful, freak occurrence. There had been nobody in the street to help him fend it off; by the time a passing driver pulled up to help, Oscar was already bleeding out. The coroner had released the remains this afternoon, and now it was Qebhet’s job to tend to them, to give Oscar back what little peace and dignity she could before his family laid him to rest. She wheeled the body out into the prep room, where her tools and treatments were already arrayed. Underneath the taint of isfet, she noticed, there was a lingering trace of a spiritual energy — but that was all it was; a trace. Qebhet hoped that Oscar’s soul had found its peace quickly. Murmuring a quick prayer, she unzipped the body bag. “Oh, you poor man. I’m so sorry.” She spoke aloud out of habit, even though there was no ghost to answer her. Oscar’s body had been savaged. His throat has been ripped out, his entrails torn open and partially devoured. Both arms were rent with claw marks, perhaps caused when he’d thrown them up to protect his face, and the right hand was a mangled mess. Stars above. A stray animal had done all this? Qebhet started, as she always did, by cleansing the body. She took a soft sponge and dipped it into a ewer of pure water, blessed by her own hand. As she worked, her voice rose and fell rhythmically in a gentle chant, invoking the funerary spells that she knew so well.
Words of cleansing. Words of purification. Qebhet went carefully, never rushing, starting at the soles of the feet and progressing down toward the head. Freeing Oscar’s body from the contamination of isfet was just as important as removing the physical blood and filth, and this stain was proving more stubborn than first she’d thought. She was so immersed in her task that she failed to take this for the warning sign that it was. But the thought crept on her as she worked her way along the body, dabbing lightly at the ragged edges of flesh around the stomach wound, cleaning out the vicious gashes in the arms — Ma’at preserve, one dog had done this? The medical examiner had deemed it so… the size of those bite wounds, though, it must have been enormous. It had taken half the neck clean away… Qebhet frowned, not liking where this train of thought was leading. She set down the sponge, pulled back from the body to study the throat wound. But instead, it was a curious shadow beneath Oscar’s nose that caught her eye. What…? It looked like — yes, it was — a small bead of ectoplasm, pale and greasy, trailing a faint line from the left nostril to the bow of the lip. Qebhet grab a pair of tweezers, a faint furrow appearing her brows. She nudged the globule of spirit-stuff cautiously with one of the prongs— —and it wriggled— —and before Qebhet could fully register, it was pouring from both nostrils, from the mouth, from the ears, slick and grey and writhing agitatedly in the air above Oscar’s face— —and Qebhet jerked backward (too late) and opened her mouth in some exclamation (stupid, stupid!)— —and the ectoplasmic cloud engulfed her—
Qebhet was drowning in it. It poured into her mouth, invaded her eyes, her nose, took hold of her senses. She gagged, spluttered, gasped for air that wasn’t there and the spirit-stuff rushed in all the faster, slick and filthy and unfathomably wrong.
She groped through the red haze of somebody else’s sensations for a spell of banishment, but she had no voice with which to speak it. She clutched at her throat, clawed at her face, but there was nothing to grab hold of. What did it want, this thing that was less than a ghost and yet—
Small, she wanted to make herself small, wanted to curl hidden in the reeds until the storm passed over. She was never a fighter, there was no venom to her bite— And then Qebhet remembered. She might not have a weapon to hand, but she did have armour. She braced her legs, screwed her eyes shut. The barrage on her senses was relentless, hard to tell where her own thoughts ended and the invader’s began. She dug her nails into her palms, hard as she could, tried to follow that pain back to her own body, to soft human skin and the hard scales that lay hidden beneath. Yes. There it was, never too far from the surface. Qebhet was embalmer and water-bearer, attendant of Anubis and nurturer of the dead, and her earthly form had shaped itself around these functions into something slight and sweet and unimposing. But she was also the Celestial Serpent, the life-giving Nile mirrored in a river of stars above, and though they chanted her name no longer, she still held it coiled inside her. She flexed her small reserves of power, and for just a couple of heartbeats, her skin blazed, blue-black scales that glittered with the light of the Milky Way. It was enough. The ectoplasmic swarm shuddered and lost cohesion; in moments, Qebhet was heaving, spluttering oily black not-fluid all over the pale linoleum. She didn’t know when she’d fallen to her hands and knees. The red fog cleared and her thoughts were once again her own. She scrambled backward, still wheezing, hot tears she didn’t remember crying stinging her face, but there was no second assault — the spirit-stuff seemed to have gone inert, whatever mad impetus had animated it apparently spent. But what impetus was that? Qebhet slumped backward against a cabinet, tried her best to slow her breathing as she sorted through the mass of disjointed images and sensations that had been thrown at her. They had come from Oscar, she was sure of that. There had been fear there, and pain, and a monster that had most definitely not been a dog, but— But Oscar was gone. Of that, too, she was certain. How could his memories linger if— Oh. The realisation settled sick and heavy in the pit of her stomach. Oh, no. Ba. Oh stars, that was his ba. The soul, as Qebhet’s people had understood it, comprised several distinct parts. There was ka, the vital essence that imbued all people with a spark of the divine. There was ab, the heart; ren, the name; shuyet, the shadow — and ba, the totality of a person’s experiences and personality. No soul, no person was complete without each of these components. Qebhet hadn’t felt the brush of a soul when she had collected Oscar’s body. Just a faint spiritual residue. Just the tattered remains of his ba, a confused, fearful jumble of his final memories, desperately seeking its way home. No wonder it had lunged at her; her ka must have called to it like a beacon. Oscar’s ghost hadn’t passed on anywhere. It hadn’t had the chance. Whatever had attacked him hadn’t just eaten his flesh, it had devoured his soul. |