Mardock Scramble

–That’s right.

–Huh? That’s all you’ve been saying since…

A cold sweat broke out on Mincemeat’s brown skin and his lips trembled as he heard:

–THAT…IS…RIGHT.

An unfamiliar voice, straight in his ear—inside his own head.

“Who the hell are you?” Mincemeat couldn’t stop himself from yelling out.

The elevator immediately resumed its ascent, throwing Mincemeat to the floor again. It stopped suddenly on the third floor before plunging straight back down again.

“You shithead!” he roared. He pointed the firearms in his hands at the panel on the door and shot it to pieces with both guns.

The elevator stopped.

A smile returned to Mincemeat’s perspiration-bathed face. “I used to be a pilot, you know. That was nothing…”

The lights went out, but that didn’t worry him. A click at the back of his eyes and his pupils shone red.

Dark, light…it was all the same to him. He rechecked the floor plans showing in his retina.

The bottom third of the elevator door had gotten as far as the second floor. With his two-hundred-thousand-dollar butter knife in his left hand, he burnt off the rest of the panel and pulled out the wiring. He pointed his other hand, firearm and all, at the door.

His eyes skipped over the wires until he found the one that opened the elevator door.

Just then, a fizz, and something sprang up under his feet. An unbearable heat ran through his body. He jumped with a shriek.

Something else leapt up from straight below him, piercing straight through his firing arm.

He rolled up his sleeve to take a look.

There was clean, round hole right between a pair of eyes on his arm. The eyelids were open wide, as if the transplanted eyes were surprised.

Mincemeat broke out in a cold sweat.

It was one damn thing after another.

The shot that came from below had hit the thumb on his shooting hand.

A series of screams emerged from Mincemeat’s mouth as he was shot again, in his hands, legs, and buttocks.

Mincemeat danced his bizarre dance to an audience of no one, yelling inside the box, where no one could see. When he dropped his knife, that too was shot to pieces. An intense surge of sparks erupted forth, scorching his right leg.

He found a moment to squeeze the grip of the gun with his right hand. He pointed the gun straight downward.

At the same time, a 10mm bullet came flying into his left eye. His mechanical eye was crushed right in the socket. Sparks and blood spurted out, littering the floor.

“I’m going to rape the shit out of you for this, you fucking bitch!”

Mincemeat fired dozens of shots at the floor, turning it into mincemeat, living up to his nickname.

Plenty of steaming holes were open in the floor now, and he peered through them, but saw no one. He turned to the elevator door, shooting it up just as he had the floor. When the bullets in the top half of his gun case were spent, he flipped it up into the air and gripped it the other way around.

He pulverized the door, leaving it a bullet-riddled mess.

“I’m going to kill you!”

He charged the door with his shoulder, and it bent open. He pushed it open with his left hand—now minus a thumb—and tumbled into the corridor, out of breath.

Blood and sweat trickled down him in equal measure—his whole body was drenched.

He crept down the corridor, crawling, and hid in the shadow of a pillar.

–Fleshie! Answer me, you bastard! Well! Flesh has been hacked! Well! Medi! Rare! Shit, answer me, someone!

But the only answer he had was wild laughter from an unknown voice, echoing all around.

Confused, Mincemeat scanned the corridor to the left and to the right.

No one.

The laughter was happening inside Mincemeat’s head.

He tried to cut the circuits but found he couldn’t.

Tears welled up in his one remaining good eye.

Regression disorder, someone had called it.

The sounds of battle brought all the bad memories back to him in a haze of black smoke.

His helicopter had been shot down, and two days later he was taken captive. It was on the day of his release, a year later, that he thought up his plan to transplant his wife’s eyes into his arm. His ex-wife, actually—she had served him with divorce papers earlier in the year, when he was already at the limit of human endurance, suffering all sorts of ill-treatment as a prisoner of war.

And his ex-wife had been giving him a look of the sincerest contrition every day—from his right bicep.

Mincemeat tugged at his hair and ripped off his blood-soaked clothes, revealing all the eyes transplanted onto his upper body.

He screamed a wordless scream as he forced himself up.

Brandishing his gun he pulled himself down the corridor, dragging his legs behind him.

The laughter in his head continued loud and shrill, driving him to distraction.

A pair of shutters slammed shut right in front of him—and behind him.