Howard wipes the cascading waves of sweat from his brow with his grease covered forearm and hisses sharply as a sea washes into his eyes. He tosses his tools to the side and grabs handfuls of his torn shirt, pressing it firmly against his face. “FUCKING idiot!” he spits aggressively, as he pulls the fabric away and blinks repeatedly, then presses it against his face again.

She screams at him with an almost animalistic cry, and he casts a red eyed glare towards her, as she stretches her arms through the cage’s bars, trying to reach him. For a few seconds, when their eyes lock, she stands still and silent, staring at him as if she were somehow remembering who he was. Then as quickly as she stopped, she lets out a growl that comes from somewhere deep inside her stomach, and she launches herself forward once more.

“I KNOW! I KNOW! I’m almost done my love, and soon, soon we can be together again as I promised you we would! I just need a few more moments, and then you can let go of that dying meat suit.” he mumbles to himself as he drags the fabric across his forehead and turns back to the open chassis that sits on the table before him. He grabs his tools once again, and rolls his head across his shoulders, cracking his neck loudly. A gasp of relief escapes his lips, and he shoves the grimy handle of a screwdriver between his teeth as he thrusts his fingers deep into the engine, squeezing an eye closed as his fingers desperately feel blindly around, trying to catch a grip of a missing wire that hangs somewhere beyond his reach. His teeth clench tightly around the screwdrivers handle as he struggles to reach the wire, and suddenly feels a piece of something chip away and fly randomly off somewhere within his mouth at exactly the same time as he finally grips the cable. With panicked desperation he pulls the cable up, and like a baby being sighted for the first time by its mother, he lets himself part with an exhausted smile as he feverishly plugs the cable into the chassis manifold. It’s then that the foreign piece of material inside his mouth finds itself caught in the back of his throat, which causes him to dry reach. As he does, he stumbles backwards and hits the cage. For several silent moments he stands there disorientated, before he spits what turns out to be a piece of tooth, to the ground. His eyes grow wide with surprise, and he shoves several fingers in his mouth, feeling around frantically at his back teeth, while she digs hers into his shoulder at the same time. He screams in agony, as he fights himself free of her grip, and crashes to the floor in a bloody heap. He turns back to her with a fevered glare, as the blood quickly runs from his cheeks.

“W-W-What have you d-done?” he stammers as he gets to his feet and grips his shoulder gently, then hisses sharply with pain. “Y-Y-You’ve FUCKING k-k-killed me SUE!” he grunt as his face twists with pain. “You’ve FUCKING KILLED me and I’ve o-only finished you’re a-avatar, m-mine is still weeks i-if not months away f-from completion,” he says as he casts a wide-eyed gaze towards the curvy robot that lies before him, and the beginnings of another similar robot that lies on the table next to it. “GOD DAMN IT!” he yells as he grabs a curved piece of metal and locks it into place over the engine of the female droid, then turns to her with weary eyes. “I-I, I’m sorry,” he stammers as he grabs a long syringe which is connected to a laptop that has had several complicated upgrades made to it. He looks at her again as tears run down his cheeks and lets out a stuttered breath.

“FUCK IT!” he spits as he strides over to her and grabs her by the head, and holds her tightly against the bars, as she bites him again. He screams in agony as he thrusts the syringe into the top of her skull and strikes a key on the laptop. She lets out a high-pitched cry, as the room is engulfed in lights of various colours, then her head explodes, and he goes crashing to the floor.

The next few moments cascade into an overflowing handful of silent minutes without movement as the smoke slowly clears, until he eventually gets awkwardly to his feet, letting out a low animalistic growl.

“Hush now my love, you have brought me b-ba-zzz-ck from t-the dead, s-s-so, so, so now it, it is my t-t-turn to be the strong one,” the now functioning robotic woman says before screaming a barrage of unintelligible words then severs his head from his body.

***

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Before you lies a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know or imagine. For scrawled in blood upon the pages hidden within the above tome is stories twisted twenty in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to answer, five minutes to sin, five minutes to do almost anything. A god, a demon, a harlot, a whore. A fascist, a killer, a sinner, a door. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too…

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