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The drill had been easy to make - flint, gears, and a few sturdy twigs all cobbled together into something usable. It sat heavy in Wilson’s hand: a length of metal with a carved wooden handle at one end, a crank in its center that rotated a toothed gear and, in turn, a bit at the opposite end. There was no elegance in its design, it was dull and plain crooked, but it worked, and it was the first thing he’d built without the help of the science machine since he’d been dropped into the black wild. He turned the crank and watched the metal grooves circle around and back again.
The skitter-scurry of bugs swarming over his brain was unbearable, had been unbearable for a stretch of time he could not measure. Thousands of barbed legs hooked into his brain, snaring the meat and leaving needlepoint tracks in their wake. They tunneled holes, ate into the folds, crawled behind his eyes, died in the creases of his mind where their bodies curled and slowly dried. Prototyping the drill had driven him to his knees in disgusted agony, beating at his head; they’d run from one point to the next as he worked, scattering apart and then reforming, an unrelievable, burning itch.
He set the drill aside on a reed mat, cutting an opening into the tools already laid across it - a straight razor, a curled hook, a sewing kit, and a pile of rags he’d torn from old vests. A pan of water sat beside him in the grass, the wind blowing sunny ripples across its surface.
Everything lay crooked and jagged across the perfect square of reed, edges and points leaning into each other that he couldn’t nudge into perfection, that gnarled further when he tried, and when he broke the razor from the line the gap it left behind was filled in by the tools around it.
Sunlight cut across his face when he snapped it open and he flicked it away with a turn of the blade. He tested its edge against his thumb, letting it bite into the skin once, then again as punishment for wincing. He’d used it to shave away a patch of hair just above his forehead, a space he’d chosen for no reason other than that it wasn’t streaked by the ugly scabbed over trenches he’d raked into his scalp.
He pulled the skin of his forehead taught and although his body taughtened in response he was surprisingly calm, the anticipation of relief outweighing his fear. He angled the razor toward himself and followed its rise until it arced out of view, then sight was replaced by touch, cold and paper thin, and his eyes slid him into darkness.
The blade dug in, sinking until it struck bone, then curved through his scalp, splitting an oozing wound before sticking in a thick mound of flesh and he had to pull everything tight again, the force sawing his skin apart against the line of the razor. He could feel sobs lurching out of his chest but the sounds broke against the frantic dry-leaf skittering of little legs - scratching and scraping multiplied and magnified into a static roar. His nerves tore into themselves, peeling through his muscles, gnawing at his bones, scratching deep lines under his skin, and his vision burned white as the world narrowed into a spotlight of searing agony.
The thunk of the razor hitting the earth was hidden behind the blood pulsing in his ears.
Everything was far away, the world coming through as if he were seeing it through a telescope flipped backwards. He fumbled awkwardly, trying to wet a rag with arms distorted and stretched, bulging into a wide ring around the rim of his vision. There was the slosh of water rolling against the sides of a pan, a distant cool wetness on his hands, then on his forehead, pressed hard against the throbbing cut. Slowly the warmth of blood and tears began to separate itself from the fire heat of pain. He stared at the ground as he fell back into himself, watching ants surround drops of his blood in the grass, and as the world moved closer and came into focus the things in his brain lit up again, running to burn up every rising thought. He wiped the coppery tang of blood from his teeth with the palm of his hand.
When he peeled the rag from his head the open flap of skin tried to lift with it, suctioning off his skull and dropping down again. The cut was a perfect half circle and he traced it with his finger, then scraped at it, trying to hook his nail underneath. Flesh slid against bone and then his skull was bared, the thin layer of blood slicked across it tacking quickly in the dry heat. A tap of his finger produced a solid, wooden sound followed by the familiar scattering of the colony behind it, but no pain. He propped the flap open with his finger and reached for the drill, pausing to will away the trembling of his hands before resting its point against his skull.
He’d tried to remember shape of the brain, tried to transpose it onto papyrus as he’d seen it long ago in anatomy books, but every attempt came out looking more malformed and inaccurate than the one before. Impossibly shaped, too small, too large, crisscrossed with jagged cuts, covered in holes, with pinpointed lobes he assigned labels such as “thoughts of beefalo” and “the sound of wood being chopped”, depictions of what he felt rather than anything of anatomical worth. And as he positioned the drill, carefully angling it this way and that to ensure that it was straight, he was acutely aware that he had no idea what he was about to drive it into.
The first rotations were useless, too light, and the point slipped off and tore a deep gash down his face. Agony struck him, hot and thick and so sudden that his scream was only a burst of air, and he curled into himself, one hand pressed hard to the cut, trying to shove the pain back into it, fighting down nausea, fighting down fear and exhaustion, fighting his body screaming at him to stop, and when the violent shaking slowed he wiped the blood from his eyes and tried again. He fisted the handle with white-knuckled force, pushed his head forward to match it, and the grooves caught bone.
He bored into his head with all the precision he could manage without the use of his eyes, with only the tightness of bone hugging metal to guide him. The uniform ticks of the gears’ teeth overlaid the sharp wooden grind echoing through his bones, rocking his limbs and jagging his vision. Shavings of skull snowed down, sticking to his face, getting in his eyes, and he paused to wipe them away with the back of his hand.
The work was all focused monotony, repetitive motions and steady sound, and when it was all broken by a muddy, sucking shlurp and then a bubbling gurgle, his surprise nearly caused him to drive the drill through his brain.
A careful tug dislodged the point and a gush of warm blood followed it that quickly slowed to a trickle. He glanced over the bone caught in the grooves before letting it roll off his fingers, clanging sharply as it scattered his misaligned tools, and reached up to seek out the hole he’d made, needing to verify its existence with the only sense he could. He tripped over the rim and felt something crackle against his skin - the bubbles of air being pushed out with every breath of his brain.
But there was no dark swarm flying from the hole, no tickling crawl of legs on his face. He rapped on his head and they answered dutifully, but crawled still further from the opening he’d made and amassed at the back of his skull. He hammered his fist there and they rushed to gather at the top of his head, and he smacked it with painful force. They collected themselves in the bowl beneath his brain, out of reach of any jolt he could give them with his hand, and tangled together in a massive pool of legs.
Wilson snapped into panic, racing thoughts pinging against his skull, too many to hold onto, too loud to separate: frustrated discussions, savage insults, threatening demands, all shrouded in a thick fog of deafening, screaming gibberish. His own voice breached in erratic bursts that had to be decoded and reassembled and his mind pushed them back and forth, searching for a space to string them. Blood pulsed from his head in time with his racing heartbeat, red streams running down his face and mixing with tears, the mess drying pink on his neck. He covered his ears, stupidly expecting silence, devastated when it didn’t come.
A garbled, backward sound radiated from the core of his mind, like a radio caught between stations, smashing between the halves of his brain, vibrating hard, hiding everything in static, voices popping in wild, stuttering spikes, organic and bubbling. He couldn’t think - there was nothing coherent left, only broken sounds and bugs and dry ugly holes and when he pressed his hand over his skull, wanting to still the buzzing bone, he felt a wind blowing warm between his fingers: his thoughts fleeing from his uncorked skull, leaving him behind. He saw his body lying in the sun, a broken husk kept alive by a merciless heartbeat, his brain dry, rotting, infested, crawling with larvae, eaten through with holes, waiting, useless, until he was finally torn apart by hounds -
“This is the dumbest stunt you’ve ever pulled, pal.”
Maxwell materialized in a burst of shadow and Wilson curled at his feet, sheltering his exposed brain from the thick ash darkening the grass around him.
“If there’s no bugs in there now… Well.” He plucked a fly from the air and it burst into black flame between his fingers. “There’s gonna be.”
He let the ashes of the fly rain down onto Wilson’s cheek. “You’ve killed yourself before, sure, but I don’t think that’s what you were going for this time - Hey, now.” A single stride took him over Wilson and cut him off as he tried to squirm away, his shoe coming down so close to Wilson’s face that he could feel the polished leather against his nose. “What kind of gentleman leaves in the middle of a conversation, huh?”
He dug his heel into Wilson’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The void of his silhouette sucked away the sun and frost bloomed around the rim of his shadow. “Let me take a look, honey. Open up.” The tip of his shoe slid from Wilson’s shoulder to the shaking hands he had clasped over his head and tried to work its way underneath, to pry them off. “No? You’re breaking my heart here.”
He leaned to one side and unveiled the sun. Light seared through Wilson’s eyes and he slapped his hands over them, trying to burrow back into darkness, and then Maxwell’s foot was underneath his chin, tipping his head up and tilting it easily, appraising the uncovered hole.
“No matter how many times I see it I’m always surprised there’s something in there.”
Wilson clawed at his leg, dragging lines down the pinstripes of his suit. His eyes still stung him blind but he could hear Maxwell tsk above him.
“ Don’t be like that, pal. I’m not here to cause any trouble. Just looking to help out an old friend.” His smile gashed through the dark. “Cross my heart.”
Maxwell had tortured him before, had made him beg for it over death, and every moment flipped through Wilson’s mind, tangible enough to feel - darkness sliming down his throat, ripping through his organs, squeezing acid into his body - and it mixed perversely with the single shard of hope still clutched to his heart. He wanted it, nearly craved it - he would swallow every shadow that Maxwell slid into his mouth, let him cut into his body and trace his fingers through him if he would just make it stop, if for just one minute he wouldn’t feel his brain vibrating with life like a rabid hive echoing in the hollow of his skull. He didn’t know what to ask for - punishment or mercy, he would take both, it was confusing, overwhelming, and he couldn’t rationalize an answer, couldn’t form it -
“Maxwell”, it was a sob and a plea and a sick offering of penitence and he desperately hoped it would be enough because it was all he could manage.
Suddenly a gloved hand was pulling his own away from the hole.
“Shh. Calm down, pal. I’ve got you.”
Wilson let himself be gathered up and cradled against Maxwell’s chest. He was surprisingly warm and when Wilson buried his face into the fabric of his suit there was the familiar scent of smoke and, deep underneath it, the smell of roses. Maxwell’s presence, his touch and his voice, pulled him back from the brink of hysteria, held together the loose pieces of his broken frame.
He flinched faintly when Maxwell pressed a thumb to the hole, whimpered when it sunk into his head, parting bone like wet clay, and when he felt the touch of leather against his brain there was no pain, no terror of invasion, but a complete and immediate grounding, a deep pressure that held him to the earth.
Shadow started pouring into him, rolling down the dome of his skull in thick drips, drenching and oiling, and everything slowed to a sticky crawl before mass panic broke out - a caged colony struggling to escape, trying to claw out of the dark, scarring bone where they clung with claws and pincers, biting away the meat of his brain, swimming in splashing gobs before blackness sucked them down.
Wilson was filthy with shadow and with panic that wasn’t his own and it was painful, but it was pain that would end, that wouldn’t drag on endlessly, and that made him crave the last burst of it, to have it breathed into his bones, and when Maxwell held his head still that, too, was comforting, not in the living warmth of contact, but in knowing that even if Maxwell chose to snap his neck the pain would end just the same, comfort in knowing that either way he wouldn’t be the one who had to end it.
Through the black fog he could feel Maxwell painting spirals over his brain, slow and precise, and there was a sensation like warm water being poured, carving lines through the thick coat of oil and sieving the shadow from his mind. Maxwell ran his thumb through the folds to slick them apart and just barely pulled apart the halves of his brain to let the stream flow through them. Something like thought blossomed in Wilson’s mind and he drifted back to summer days harvesting honey - the loud buzzing quieting under plumes of smoke, scraping the hive clean and putting it back together, watching the bees reassemble to rebuild what they had lost.
The world filled in around him piece by piece - cedar and sweetgrass warmed in the sun, birdsong ringing, the straw skitter of rabbits, the ghost of the wind. The feeling of Maxwell inside him, filling him, rolling against him. The gentle stroking of his thumb rubbing circles and round little patterns, just barely slipping into the beds curving through his brain.
Fingers ran through his hair, scratching faintly over his scalp, and Wilson breathed a quiet moan, wanting Maxwell deeper, wanting his hand enveloping his brain, wanting both hands around it, squeezing, his fingers digging deep between the folds, slipping into the tight opening separating the hemispheres.
“Heh. I can feel you thinking about me.” Maxwell rubbed Wilson’s neck in time with the stroking of his thumb and smirked when he quivered in his lap. “I wonder… is this the first time you’ve enjoyed having me inside your head?” He leaned down and pressed his lips to Wilson’s forehead, soft and warm against blood-dried skin.
“Feeling better?”
Wilson’s answer was only a breath, almost a moan, “Yes.”
“Good.”
A black bug slid from Maxwell’s thumb, breaking from his glove with skittering difficulty to hide away in the darkness of Wilson’s head. Wilson jerked in Maxwell’s arms, then started thrashing wildly, arms flying out, grabbing grass with his hands, raking trenches into the ground, nearly convulsing in his desperation.
“N-no..no. NoNoNO!, Maxwell PLEASE!”
Maxwell crushed him close, his soft laughter drowned out by violent panting and broken sobs. Bone and skin mended themselves as his thumb slid from the hole, sealing the bug inside. He could hear its wings beating frantically against Wilson’s skull - a clamoring buzz and the useless slapping of attempted liftoff.
When he loosened his grip Wilson rolled to the ground and scrabbled away on hands and knees, keening like a dying animal. He fell over and curled up, clutching his head, then beating at it, his desperate sobs rising into hoarse, agonized screams.
Maxwell rose from the grass and looked down at the blood drying dark on his suit. A swipe of his hand cleaned it away, another smoothed the wrinkles from his waistcoat, and he stood immaculate under the slowly setting sun. He pulled a cigar from the shadows between his jacket and chest and lit it, inhaling smoke as he watched Wilson writhe in the dirt. Tendrils of shadow rose from the ground and curled around him and as they swallowed him down a line of smoke trailed after him that broke apart against the earth. The shattered plumes curled away into the air, rising with the screams piercing the silent woods, and Wilson was left alone with one more piece of him inside his head.