Gaining sentience is a strange feeling. Even stranger when you gain sentience only to find that you’re a pile of broken bones.

 From the positioning I’d guess that I was against a wall. I may have only just gained a mind, but I’m fairly sure broken bones can’t defy gravity.

The reason it seems this way is because half of my me pile is raised at a slant, higher than the other half. But even against a wall I feel spread pretty thin, so I do what any self-respecting pile of bones would do (I assume. As I’ve said I just got here so I don’t have any comparison).

I clench as hard as I can and hope for the best.

To my surprise (to be dead honest I acted on a whim), something actually happens. Little splinters and shards of bone and marrow start budging and shuffling inwards to the middle of me.

Felling much more solid (in the loosest sense of the term), I try whatever senses I might have had at some point. Sight: nope. Hearing: either it’s dead silent or it’s not here either. Touch: other than myself I can barely feel what I’m on. Could be a floor, could be quick sand. Hell, I could be floating for all the difference it made.

And just as I resign myself to an unlife of me time, a compulsion grips me. And I don’t just mean the need to get up and get something done. I mean a really dark impulse telling me that there’s something other than me, and it has the audacity to be more alive than me.

So with some dark force essentially whispering in my ear, I try another sense.

But not a normal sense (or at least I think it’s not normal), this gives me a hyper awareness of the universe.

Fooled you didn’t I.

No, this sense filled the dark with swirling pockets of colour, similar to how I see the many pieces of me.

What’s that dark compulsiveness? Lick sense? Latch sense?

Anyway, with a bunch of unidentified swirling patterns around me. I focus in to see if I can make out any shapes.

Well how about that, another pile!

Hellooo there Fellow scrap heap!

Well that did nothing. I guess being in the same boat doesn’t give us some kind of telepathic bond.

But now that I’m getting used to this whole ditch sense- yes compulsion that’s what I called it- I notice that all four of the other colours are dull and small.

I guess we just aren’t that definable. I mean, how impressive is a pile of broken bones?

So I just figure until a brighter shape happens across us all, we’re not gonna know for sure how badly we need a boost.

***

Okay, well I don’t have much sense of time, but I guess you could say it’s been a while. And I’m absolutely bored to death.

I started shuffling towards the nearest pile and was given a hand. Literally. I stumbled over something and before I knew it there were digits, an ulna and about half a radius.

So with a new set of movements to get used to I started trying to see what this bad boy could do.

It wasn’t much.

I could open and close my hand and move all two fingers and a thumb. But that got tiresome fairly quickly. But hey, silver lining; I can get new bones from other places.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Oh, speak of the devil and he shall appear.

After making us wait for ages.

Three bright shapes are approaching.

One is yellow, and the other two are brown. In contrast to our faded grey, they were very distinctive. And bright. Annoyingly bright.

The compulsion gets stronger. These must be those selfish live people. Keeping all that life for themselves. I mean, would it kill them to share some with the less lively? I don’t know why, but I get the feeling I should try to do something. Like hurt them, knock them down a bit, make them a little less alive.

But as they walk past my outstretched hand, one of the long parts of their shapes sinking into one of the other piles.

Nooooo! My favourite bone heap (after myself of course) just faded out. All that happened was it got stepped on and poof, gone. And the brown shape that did it kept walking like he didn’t even know we were there.

And to make matters worse they’ve stopped and one of them has started throwing what I can only describe as a fit.

Its long appendages that went through my counterpart swung wildly, smashing through the others like a hurricane. A very erratic, mardy hurricane.

I guess I should count myself lucky I was the farthest away because the two other life-forces calmed it down before it found me, and I can feel I little more pressure on top of me so I think I may have a few more whole bones to work with.

But now the big bright things are leaving, which leaves me with just me myself and I. well I best start on making some voices in my head, because I’m not gonna stay sane forever. How does aether sound for a name? Maybe I’ll make a female voice up to flirt with.

Ooh wait. This is interesting. In the new bones I think I finally found a skull. Here I am about to lose my head, then I get given a new one. So poetic.

And it seems it adds some more awareness to my lip sense- no compulsion you went away when everyone re-died, you don’t get to correct me- so now there are a load of white squiggles in the blackness.

They all overlap and make very little sense, it’s kind of giving me a headache (yeah I can say that now). Although it could just be the big hole in my new skull.

There also seems to be something else going on with me that I hadn’t noticed until now. I had less bits and pieces of bone and marrow, but they were bigger than before, and when I respectfully clenched again, they twisted in and tried to fit together.

So I guess my bones regenerate. Sweet.

No wait, I can’t think it’s sweet, sweetness is for living things. I’ll start over.

So I guess my bones regenerate. Sour.

Eh, good enough.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, I am going to see how this whole reassembly pans out and take it from there.

***

Okay so another long time later and everything is in pieces. Bigger pieces than before to be exact.

Instead of your standard pile, I’m now collection of a collar bone, three spine pieces, a still caved skull, a snapped arm, a three digit hand, and what I think may be a kneecap. All those new additions probably helped.

So my next plan of action? Simple. Crawl around until I roll over enough bones to get to a bigger bunch of bones. And the effort is gonna be murder since my arm is the only thing that’s attached other bones to complete it.

Well, no use waiting to not die, let’s get to work.

Ooh a set of femurs, I’m gonna see if the kneecap reacts later.

This might come in handy, I always wanted a hip bone. I don’t know why but now that compulsion has gone quiet I’m feeling like pelvic thrusting would be fun.

Speaking of compulsion, after it quietened down and the live things left, I had an epiphany.

There’s no way I can stand up to one of those things. It took the random killing of my people, but until my bones are more than weakly glued fragments making a structure, I can’t feel like hunting things more alive than me. Come to think of it, I never thought of it until compulsion appeared.

Oh hey there are les squiggles in my vision, I must have made it around something. That or it was my own bones in the way.

And now that I can understand the shapes, I see a Satan send. It is either a cage that’s really far away, or it’s a set of ribs. Only one way to find out. Onwards me!

I’m finding it difficult to keep myself together. With the new bones I’m having to stop to pull the femurs forward every so often. And then there’s the fracturing.

That’s right. The more I exert myself the weaker my bones feel, and that’s taking its sour time to sort out. But hey, I wasn’t born yesterday (or was I?), so I know patience is needed.

After I big cycle of repeating those two problems, I finally make it to what I was hoping. It’s a brand old ribcage! Hooray for me!

And it comes with its very own spine. Sour bonus. Now let’s get this show on the road. Time to assimilate this and hope there’s enough for it to link like my arm has.

Okay so the skull goes here, pelvis down at the bottom. Collar bone here, femurs and kneecap with the pelvis.

And there… you… have it! My colour is spreading into the ribcage and everything seems okay for now. But the ribcage does feel kind of Smokey. And brittle. Well as long as it doesn’t crumble while I get up I’ll be fine.

And now that I have some form of structure, it is time to get up and go.

And as soon as I stand on my femur stubs, I promptly tip over back to the ground.