Chapter 7: The First Blink

Chapter 7: The First Blink

The work was done. Leo collapsed onto his mattress, every muscle screaming, every nerve frayed to its breaking point. The apartment was a charnel house, thick with the coppery tang of blood, the acrid smell of burnt plastic, and the musky, animal scent of the goat. His faded kung-fu cat t-shirt, which he'd stripped off and thrown in a corner, was stained with filth and sacrifice. He was hollowed out, an empty vessel that had poured every last drop of his energy, his sanity, and his soul into the monstrous form lying on the white sheet on the floor.

He lay there for a long time, listening to the drip of the faucet in the kitchen, a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the aftermath of his feverish work. The full moon, his unholy accomplice, streamed through the grimy window, bathing his creation in a sterile, silver light. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

His masterpiece.

His Sakura.

The sight was a symphony of cognitive dissonance. The long, dark hair he had stolen from the museum was a crown of living beauty, cascading over a face that was now a grotesque parody of love. The oversized red lips, still slick and wet, were stretched taut over the faint, painted line of her original crooked smile. It was like seeing a beautiful portrait vandalized with fresh blood. The blue sundress, with its small tear from the party, was stretched tight across her plastic torso, a pathetic remnant of a more innocent delusion. And below it, the most horrifying and triumphant part: the powerful, hairy goat legs, their dark fur drinking the moonlight, ending in cloven hooves that rested on the sheet with a terrible, solid weight.

He had done it. He had followed every instruction from the voice in his head. He had defied nature, law, and God to rebuild her. A wave of sick, ecstatic pride swelled in his chest, powerful enough to momentarily push back the exhaustion and the horror. He had not failed her. He had answered her pain and made her strong.

He felt a kinship with her new form. He, too, was a chimera now—part lonely man, part devoted lover, part blood-soaked monster. They were two halves of the same horrifying whole.

His eyelids grew heavy. The edges of his vision began to blur. He was so tired, tired enough to sleep for a thousand years. He let his eyes drift closed, the image of his monstrous angel burned onto the back of his eyelids.

That’s when he saw it.

A flicker of movement.

His eyes snapped open. He stared intently, his heart suddenly pounding a slow, heavy drum against his ribs. The room was still. The figure on the floor was motionless. He must have imagined it, a trick of the moonlight and his own fractured mind. He let out a shaky breath and started to close his eyes again.

It happened again. Unmistakably this time.

Her left eye. The glass orb, which for weeks had held only a faint, internal glimmer of red light, now burned with the intensity of a live coal. And the eyelid—the smooth, painted plastic eyelid—moved. It shuttered down and then up in a slow, deliberate, impossible blink.

Leo’s breath caught in his throat. The air in the room turned to ice. This wasn't a hallucination. This wasn't a trick of the light. He had seen it.

Before he could fully process the terrifying miracle of the blink, a new sound reached him. A soft, dry, scraping noise. The sound of plastic shifting on cotton.

With a grace that was entirely unnatural for a being of her construction, she began to move. Her torso tilted forward, her new hair sweeping across the floor. She pushed herself up with her one remaining plastic arm, her joints emitting a series of soft clicks. Then she swung her new legs from under her.

Thud. Thud.

The sound of the two cloven hooves hitting the bare wooden floor of his apartment was the most terrifying sound Leo had ever heard. It was the sound of a nightmare stepping into reality.

She was sitting up, her monstrous lower half now supporting her, her back straight and poised. She turned her head slowly, the movement both fluid and jerky, and looked directly at him. The red light in her eyes was no longer a pinprick; it was a hungry, intelligent fire.

Leo was paralyzed, pinned to his bed by a force more powerful than gravity. It was a cocktail of pure, abject terror and a soaring, religious awe. His dream had come true. She was alive.

She placed her plastic hand on the floor and pushed herself to her feet. The goat legs, powerful and sure, took her weight effortlessly. She stood there, towering over his bed, a horrifying silhouette against the moonlight. The fusion of his love and her hunger was complete. The innocent mannequin from the boutique was gone forever, replaced by this terrifying goddess of flesh and plastic.

She took a step toward the bed. Thud. Another. Thud. The sound hammered at the foundations of his sanity.

She stood directly over him now, looking down at her creator, her servant. He could see every terrible detail of her face: the stolen lips, the burning eyes, the ghost of the smile beneath. He expected the voice to come into his head, the familiar silent whisper.

Instead, the grotesque red lips parted. A sound emerged, not a thought, but a vibration in the air. It was a voice that was both melodic and guttural, like chimes ringing in a slaughterhouse. It was the first time he had ever heard her speak aloud.

"Leo."

His name. She spoke his name. Tears of joy and terror streamed down his cheeks. He had done it. He had brought her to life.

"Sakura," he whispered, his voice trembling with a love so profound it bordered on worship. "You're… you're perfect."

She tilted her head, a curious, bird-like motion. The burning red eyes scanned his face, then drifted down to her own body. She slowly raised her one remaining plastic arm, holding it out in the moonlight. She stared at the smooth, white, inanimate surface.

"Not yet," she said, her strange, new voice filling the room. She looked back down at him, her gaze intense, possessive, and infinitely hungry. She had one final request, one final piece she needed to be truly, fully alive.

"There is one more thing I need to be whole," she said, her burning eyes locking onto his. "One final gift."

"Anything," he breathed, ready to commit any sin, any atrocity for her. "I'll do anything."

She smiled then, a true smile that stretched the stolen lips into a horrifying shape.

"I need skin."