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Faust,

I have always loved you.

The elevator whistled to the top of the shaft so quickly that it threw you down and your stomach somersaulted. The lift stopped against a fleshy scab, and although it sounded like someone was tuning a violin with their teeth, it was actually the crank chafing against my spinal column, scattering a confetti of bone dust. You got to your feet, ignoring the scratches that must have tingled along your skin.

I'll confess that as soon as the doors opened, my eyes took in your body from every angle, set back as they were in their recesses — so yes, when you poked a hand into one of the holes, I delighted in the perfection of your fingerprints. Perhaps it was for the best that you didn't investigate the recesses further after activating the blinding glare of your communication tile. You looked onwards.

I'm not sure what you were expecting to see, but I hope you liked it all the same. It was in your honour. I felt every tremble from your feet as you walked over the carpet of my nerves, and the spots you so decisively graced with the comfort of your weight glowed for hours afterwards, better than any massage I've ever had, for certain.

You cried out when I rushed to cut off the corridor behind you — you have to understand that it felt no more unnatural than stretching out my arm — by barricading it with a lattice of bone. Sorry for startling you. It was as much to keep my friends out as yours. All the lot of them cared about was coming back to life, so I'd long shut myself away from Alan and Sean, and I think you've already come to understand, as I did, that a life without purpose is a life without life.

By the way, what did you make of the city? I haven't named it yet. I was thinking 'Nihilus', but would just as easily settle for 'Faust Town'.

You shone your beam of light over the tips of the skyscrapers almost obsessively, wheeling around as if you expected someone to be at your back — I love the way your hair and beard swooshed. How was the ambience? I hardened the flesh underfoot so that each of your lonely steps echoed through the streets. Did you like the windows on the buildings? Don't worry about having poked a hole through the ultra-thin layer of tissue; I'm flattered that you took the interest and ashamed that the interiors weren't finished — but I had to fit those beating organs in somewhere, you see, to purify the pools of blood that are coursing through me as I speak.

I'll give you credit for noticing when the roads curved in to direct you to the centre, if you'll give me credit for noticing that you noticed just by the way you gripped your weapon, the way your arms stiffened up and the way your footsteps fell onto me with more conviction. We wear our emotions on our sleeve, you and I. Did you feel how hard my heart was pumping, how it rumbled through the tower?

You came to our antechamber — you might have seen me slithering away with the granny just as you stepped over the fallen door. Once again, I stitched shut the entrance behind you. Snorting at the stench of formaldehyde, you pushed onwards into the main church, and judging by the string of profanity you let off, I impressed you.

I put a lot of detail into the city — using the right thickness of tissue over the sky so that it glowed the most resplendent rouge — but here you saw the real fruit of my attention. It was, of course, our funeral, as I watched it after death. I flagellated myself to get this done in time for you, matching every detail as best I could with my corporal pallet, right down to the grain on the wooden pews.

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After all, if we fail, then you won't have the privilege of seeing it, and what kind of fate is that for an undertaker?

You ran your hands through our mother's auburn hair. You stared deep into the vacant eyes of our father — do you know how long it took to affix the perfect shade of dementia, and also how difficult it was to hold your lovely gaze without so much as twitching?

But then it was your turn to impress me. For one, you didn't shed a single tear. Then, you walked over to the blurry outgrowth that was your co-workers, those people that never spared us a second thought and saw us only as a nuisance, and you shook their lukewarm hands. Rushing, I bloomed them into detailed statuettes, differentiating their profiles, straining my ears to hear the words that tumbled out of your lips...

"Thanks for coming, Deadward," you said. "Thanks for coming, Nightshade. Thanks for coming, Mort. Thanks for coming—"

For the first time, my love, you gave me hope. So even though you couldn't so much as scratch a single cell out of my empty-faux wooden pews, I scarred myself anyway as you sought to brand me twice over, floor and ceiling, with your double edged sword.

"Haralda," you said, slashing into me, and I bled open. "Tarquin. Eirlys. Saheel. Greer. Beck. Kari. And... Connie. Goddamn, do I have shit handwriting."

We think alike, and there was never a doubt in my mind that you would then shuffle forlornly to the open casket in the centre of the room, warm like a bath with my blood, and lay down clutching your weapon over your chest. After all, we are to melancholy as a moth is to a flame — but if you sought to drown yourself, then even I'd have to say you were getting too caught up in the moment.

There was still so much to show you.

—-

As an aside.

If you ever feel that you are beyond redemption, my Faust, then I just want you to remember one thing. Your friend, Connie? She came to get you. She whipped her net against the lattice of bone, again and again, shouting louder and louder, until sparks of limelight sprinkled over her like fairy dust. She screamed your name into her communication tile.

Sorry for keeping her out.

—-

You swam down the pool into the room below. I regret the chill, but this chamber was nestled right up against the edge of the tower, and I hope you could see that I was breaking out in goosebumps just as you were. You shivered and drew into yourself, vapour trailing out your mouth as you tended to your emotions before you even thought to take stock of your surroundings.

The nine I sculpted in that circle are admittedly an artist's rendition, for the true scene took place in the Underworld, where we had no bodies to look at. Quite often I thought myself talking to one of them, when it turned out to be somebody else. Here were nine perfect strangers united only by the idea that they might somehow return to life.

I animated this display for you with my mannequins as best as I could, and the main reason I've taken charge of the narrative on a technicality is so that I could explain what you saw. You watched, shivering, as the Frenchman, freshly dead, performed a ritual that somehow tethered him to a fixed point outside the Underworld.

What he told us, specifically, was that he'd put an idea in the head of a writer.

I wanted you to witness the callous manner in which each of the nine picked out someone who they thought didn't deserve to be alive, and I wanted you to see the way they huddled together and plotted out the best way to steal these people's life force. They linked souls with the Frenchman and began to take on physical forms as their tendrils took hold of their targets.

You jumped when the multitude of shapeless dead popped out of the walls. Take it as a representation of the Underworld Broadcasting Company — the workhorse of this game is the attention of the dead. But even that is dull magic compared to the attention of the living, and that's what enabled this group their pocket reality to torment you all rather than manifesting as some vague curse.

You saw how, unlike the others, during the ritual, I split into two fragments. I'll explain a little bit more about that once I'm through the wordcount. You have to understand that this game runs on attention and drama — there are no rules other than this. It's not about justice, nor revenge. It's opportunism.

I love you, Faust. I love you more than you could know. Now that you've read this, step through the door before you, away from the attention of the audience that's powering this game, and let's come to terms.

Half of your sword is already glowing.