Jar

‘Rin?’ Zane yelled from the stairs.  

‘Downstairs,’ Merrin yelled back as he trawled through the cupboards looking for an empty jar. He hoped that he was loud enough for Zane to hear through all the ruckus he was making.  

He must’ve been, as seconds later the door to the basement opened and Zane appeared in the doorway. A basket hung from the crook in his elbow, the dark red lining was tearing away from the wicker in places. It was just another thing they needed to fix. In the flickering candlelight, Merrin could see the dullness of Zane’s skin and just how gaunt his face looked.  

‘I’m heading to the market to get some food for dinner,’ he said as he leant against the wall of the staircase. ‘You need anything? Other than the obvious, I mean.’  

Merrin looked around the room he was standing in. The mess of blood and whatever else on the floor and broken jars from blood-slicked hands and fear induced tremors. He’d tracked bloody footprints across the stone floor, the sticky substance clinging to the hems of his trousers, fusing it to his skin. He must’ve looked every bit a mess he felt. Merrin didn’t know what ‘the obvious’ meant. From Zane it could’ve been anything from another body to Merrin’s sanity. Neither of which Merrin thought you could get at the market.  

From where he was crouched in front of the cupboard, Merrin looked at the shelves above. He mentally checked off everything he knew he’d recently restocked, and the other things that he knew he needed more of. There were more than enough powdered antlers to last him another few weeks at least. He’d gathered up anything he’d needed to get from the forest: acorns, moss, lichen, pink waxcaps, wild garlic, burdock, hazel leaves, and hawthorn. He didn’t think he needed anything else from out there – though he wasn’t going to send Zane out to the forest to get them anyway. There was stuff that he could only get from the market; like iron nails, beeswax, leather, those apple tarts that Vivienne made fresh from the apples that ‘definitely weren’t stolen’ from Lady Michelle’s orchard. The orchard that had previously belonged to Mr. Ulakyan until Lady Michelle decided that any of the fruit grown on Ashenport’s soil belonged to her. Not that anyone actually listened to a word she said, her guards included.  

Is that what Zane meant by the obvious?  

‘Apple tarts,’ Merrin said, his voice coming out as a hushed whisper, ‘and jars.’  

He looked over to where Zane was now, whilst Merrin was busy thinking about his inventory he hadn’t noticed Zane move closer. He moved some of the jars around, mildly reorganising Merrin’s shelves until he could see all of them.  

‘Tarts and jars?’ Zane smiled down at him as he picked up a glass jar filled with ash bark. ‘Anything more substantial?’  

Merrin hadn’t eaten all day. Or at least he didn’t think he had. He didn’t even know what time it was any more. Was it even still the same day? Then again, had he even been to sleep yet. Last night he’d come downstairs to clean up whatever mess he’d made from preparing a few rabbits to trade. Then he’d started to sort his shelves out to count the empty jars he had. Then he’d piled them all up on his altar to try and measure the amount of jars he had to the overflowing dish of entrails. The tarp he’d laid out to catch the blood was doing a piss poor job, and any blood he’d cleaned up from the rabbits had been practically doubled in half the amount of time it’d taken him to clean. He didn’t have enough large bowls or buckets without holes in to be able to sort the oozing mass of guts and whatever other organs were in the dish. Merrin couldn’t even remember how many different bodies made up that pile. There was one from bear trap out by the old mill. There was definitely one from the net near the burial mound. Was there one from the cliff path? Or was it the lake? They were soaked to the bone by the time Merrin helped them hobble to The Clocktower; they were so exhausted that Merrin doubted that they even knew what the room he took them to looked like. That probably made three. Which would make sense since he had three skulls in his basket to clean. Well, he was going to ditch them in the cleaning room and let nature do what it did best.  

But he didn’t remember scooping out three bodies. He only had two hearts. So where did the third skull come from? Maybe it was the execution down at-  

‘Merrin.’ Zane was crouched down beside him, eyebrows furrowed in worry.  

Or was it confusion? 

Merrin knew Zane almost better than he knew himself. He knew the way Zane ticked inside, all the small pieces that had been slotted together to make him work. Again, and again, and again. The countless hours spent stitching and unstitching. The amount of blood, sweat and tears both metaphorically and physically pumped into his body just to make him whole again. All that time and Merrin still struggled when he got that look on his face.  

Zanes mouth was moving but Merrin couldn’t register a single sound coming out of it. It must’ve been obvious, as Zane stopped talking and stood up. He held a hand out to Merrin and feigned a disgusted look when Merrin slipped his blood slicked hand into it. He hauled Merrin to his feet and led him towards the other room in the basement. Merrin barely ever used it, there was no reason to. All it had was a makeshift bed and a water feature. Zane used it for cleaning himself up or resting. A simple concept for a simple room. But Merrin didn’t need it, he’d just drag himself up to his own room to sleep, if he got blood on the covers then so be it. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence. 

Zane guided him to the bed with a hand on his back. He didn’t need to sleep, he needed to finish what he was doing. As he turned to Zane to tell him just that, he was met with a look that could be described as nothing less than a scowl. 

‘Rest, just for thirty minutes,’ Zane said, pushing Merrin back until he fell onto the makeshift bed. 

The wood creaked beneath the sudden weight. When Merrin tried to stand up, Zane moved to stand directly in front of him. 

‘I’m fine,’ Merrin said, or at least he thought he did. The words were a jumbled mess when they came out, his body fighting to process what he wanted it to do. 

‘Uh huh.’ Zane crossed his arms and ordered Merrin to lie down with a nod of his head. ‘Thirty minutes.’ 

‘M’not tired,’ he argued, but lay down anyway. 

‘Thirty minutes of sleep will be more productive than looking in an empty cupboard for jars that you don’t have.’ Merrin could practically hear the smile in Zane’s voice. Zane ran his fingers through the blood tangled mess of Merrin’s hair. ‘Sleep well, Rin.’ 

Merrin closed his eyes and was asleep before Zane even left the basement. 

***  

When Merrin awoke, he had even less of a grip on time. Without any natural light streaming into the basement, Merrin could only guess how long he’d been asleep. He felt more rested than before, but not like he’d slept through the night, or was it day? If anything, Zane wasn’t by his side so chances were he was still at market. So, no more than three hours. Even on Zanes most sociable days, he didn’t spend more than an hour at the market. Too many people, too much noise, too much everything.  

Merrin pushed himself up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He still couldn’t fully feel his legs, but that was probably just from the weird position he slept in. Om the floor near the head of the bed was a small basket with a hunk of bread, a pot of honey, and an apple. Beside them was a note, scribbled in Zane’s handwriting. ‘Eat up’.  

Despite Zane not actually being there, Merrin did as the note instructed. The blood on his hands had dried enough that it wasn’t smearing on his food, not that he cared about the taste anyway. The bread was slightly stale, and the apple was sour, but it was food. And it was some of the nicest food he’d had in a while that wasn’t stew.

Merrin scooped the remainder of the honey with the crust of his bread, savouring the sweetness on his tongue. If he could eat just a jar of honey he would, he’d ransack the honey farms if Zane let him. But honey wasn’t something that he could live off of, or at least that’s what Zane had said. Orlia had said the same thing on more than one occasion, not that Merrin ever listened to the health advice from someone who wouldn’t eat vegetables, or fruit, or anything that wasn’t meat, bread or cheese. She was a strange one, but that was one of the many qualities that made him so interested in her. 

He looked down at the blood on his hands, at all the strange qualities he must’ve possessed himself. Only Zane knew just how far this all went. All the blood, all the guts, all the strange and wonderful experiments he spent so long perfecting to the point where he knew exactly where the organs needed to go. He didn’t need all the fancy books Zane would read with the badly drawn diagrams or obnoxious labels. He could tell just by looking at the body. Sure, it took a bit of trial and error, but that’s what experiments were. If something didn’t work the first time, he could tweak it and try again. It wasn’t as if dead bodies were in a life or death situation. If he fucked up he could just find another – or make another, whichever was easiest. But then again Zane didn’t like getting his hands dirty with all of that stuff. He’d complain about how ‘gross’ it was, and how he hated the smell. He couldn’t say much though, as Merrin had seen how gross his experiments were. Merrin would much rather put his hand in a dead body, or dissect a corpse opposed to whatever skin boiling serum Zane tested on whoever was stupid enough to agree. That used to be Merrin, until Zane thought it would be detrimental to himself to injure Merrin in any way. He still got Merrin to test out some of the nicer things; syrups or small infusions that he’d made with no greater use than enhancing flavour. Well, other than the one time a simple infused drink had given Merrin enough energy that he didn’t sleep for a week straight. It was a confusing experience to say the least – not that Merrin really remembered a lot of it. 

Merrin placed the empty pot of honey back into the basket to deal with later. He could easily take it up when Zane was cooking so that they could wash everything all at once. He also didn’t feel like going upstairs just yet, especially when he still had work to do down here. After all, that pile of entrails wasn’t going to sort itself. 

Merrin left the so-called ‘recovery room’ and returned to his blood splattered altar room. In his more conscious state, he could see just how bad it was. No wonder Zane had told him to lie down; there wasn’t a single surface in this room that wasn’t covered in blood. The floor had bloody footprints trailing from the main pool beneath the entrails, to the cupboards and to the door. Each one showed just how sporadic Merrin’s movements had been. Trailing back and forth between the altar itself and various points in the room that all held some necessity. The cupboards, the shelves, the sink, the open stone tomb that Merrin had been using to store all the organs before transferring them to a large ornate bowl meant to be used for fire pits, or some sort of light. Merrin didn’t really know, he’d taken it from one of the ruins over in the west, much to Zane’s annoyance. But he’d proven its use as a large bowl, so Zane’s complaints began to peter off. 

He looked at all the blood, at the squirming mess of organs in the bowl and all the stuff he’d need to clean. But that was a job for after he’d finished making a mess. It wasn’t that big of a job, he just needed jars to put everything into. He’d start off small, with eyes to be put into the smallest, and other singular small organs. Hearts were already in their designated jars, all lined up neatly and kept where no one would find them. All the other organs were just for experimentation. He didn’t really need them, but it would’ve been a waste to just get rid of them. Maybe if they had a dog then they could feed it whatever they didn’t need. It would be a good way of getting rid of evidence; the only problem was that Merrin still needed the bones. He’d still have to take all the bodies apart for everything he needed. He continued to keep all the organs for all those times where something got damaged. It was easier to just have all these things on hand just in case instead of having to go and take them. Freshness wasn’t an issue. Not anymore. Merrin wasn’t always sure of what he was doing, so inevitably something would go wrong somewhere down the line. He used to think the organs needed to be fresh when he put them in so that they still retained the life they’d had previously. On more than one occasion Merrin had ripped the heart straight out of someone’s chest and buried it into Zane’s. It was messy, troubling, and fear inducing. It also meant he either had to find someone very quickly, or keep someone chained up just in case. The former was far too much for Merrin to deal with, especially since it meant leaving Zane alone. The latter was just another mouth to feed, and neither he nor Zane wanted to deal with that – they were barely feeding themselves after all. 

It had taken two lots of hearts until he finally received confirmation that he didn’t need to rip a beating heart out of a man’s chest in order to bring Zane back. No, instead he just needed the heart. Whatever magic he’d begun to harness was channelled into the organs without him needing to think about it. Some would say it’s a gift. But for most, a curse. Not that he cared, magic was magic at the end of the day. Why differentiate between good and bad when there were people out there using ‘good’ magic to decimate villages or tear holes in realms. Was he being unethical? Probably. Was it morally wrong? Probably. Did Merrin care? Not in the slightest. If it meant he could keep Zane by his side forever, then he’d raze this whole island to the ground. He was selfish, but Zane was all he had and all he truly cared about anymore. And Zane was happy. He could do whatever he wanted with little repercussions now. It’s not that Zane cared about anyone else either. Everyone was just ends to means for Zane, a way for him to get him whatever he wanted. If he wanted books for research then he’d do whatever it took to avoid talking to anyone. If he needed ingredients then he’d ask Merrin first before anyone else. Zane barely even tolerated Orlia coming over. He could exist in the same room as Matty so long as he didn’t ask questions. But he would openly avoid Danny any chance he took; not that Danny wanted to talk to Zane in the first place. In Zane’s mind, if he could live his life with just Merrin, then he would do everything he could to make that happen.

Merrin walked into the altar room, his feet squelching against the blood coated stone floor. He scanned the shelves, remembering that he’d found nothing in the cupboards. Zane had even said that he was wasting his time looking for something that wasn’t there. In his more conscious state, it took Merrin not even a minute to find the jars he’d spent fuck knows how long looking for. Wildly enough, they were neatly piled on the altar, ready for Merrin to sort through the entrails. Everything was exactly where it should’ve been. 

Rolling his sleeves up, Merrin picked up the brazier of guts and moved it closer to his stack of jars. It was heavy, heavier than he thought, but he’d dealt with worse. Once it was safely on the end of the altar, Merrin picked up one of the jars and moved it to the middle.

Merrin walked over to the shelf and grabbed a few ingredients he needed. Some liquids to suspend the organs in, herbs that he could use to preserve them with. He didn’t know how it worked, or even how long it would work, all he knew was that somehow sholdur root and crinna shells could be used with elven blood in order to prolong the life of organs outside of the body. The only way he knew any of this was because Demmos had told him. Merrin had originally thought he was just hearing voices again. He treated the ghastly visions like he’d done with every one before: he ignored them. If he saw something strange and other worldly in the kitchen but Zane wasn’t paying it any attention, chances were that it wasn’t real. But Demmos was persistent; night after night Merrin had the same dream. Day after day he had the same visions.

It wasn’t until Demmos had clearly had enough of Merrin ignoring him. When people spoke of fearing the “wrath of the gods” Merrin had never imagined that wrath being an entire trough of blood being tipped onto him. He was lucky that it happened when he was stood in what Zane had dubbed the ‘living pool’. It was nothing more than a small stone pool meant to be some sort of water feature for the gardens of one of the fancy houses in the west. But of course a single crack was enough for them to no longer want it, so Merrin repurposed it. Instead of a water feature, Zane used it to clean himself up after a ritual. Merrin was used to getting covered in blood, just not that much at once.

Merrin wasn’t concerned about inevitably being covered in blood after sorting through all the entrails. He didn’t even bother to roll up his sleeves, it wouldn’t have been of any use anyway, they were already soaked . 

Merrin rifled through the pile of guts, pulling out a small intestine. It squirmed in his hands as he unravelled it from the rest of the organs. He didn’t have much use for intestines: they weren’t like hearts that Merrin needed for every ritual; they weren’t like lungs or kidneys, or even livers. They could all be used if Zane needed something, just in case the worse happened. Sometimes they even proved useful when Lady Machelle decided to try her luck at controlling food supplies in Ashenport. So, despite the lack of use the intestines served at the moment, Merrin was sure he could think of a use for them, even if that was just shelf decoration. 

Besides, it was easier to find all the smaller organs once the intestines were out of the way. If he didn’t, it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, just significantly softer and far more squelchy. Despite grabbing one of the largest jars he had, Merrin began to doubt if it was big enough to hold the intestine, let alone three of them. Maybe he would’ve done better just putting them into a bucket for later. 

But where was the fun in that?