Body Of Water

Dave was drunk; dead drunk. Or rather Drunk Dead... Ebrius Ad Mortem, to give the ceremony its formal, Latin title.

Tapping the first couple of pints of blood from the splice in his cephalic vein hadn't been too bad. If anything, it gave him a warm, vertiginous sense of impending sleep. The murmured chanting of the priest and the responses of the congregation lulled him further into semi-consciousness.

An unseen hand turned the cannula tap, tugging at the needle; the blood flow stopped. Having watched this ritual himself, before he was arrested and tried of course, Dave knew that what was coming next would not be so bearable.

As the metal table was tipped forward, the remaining reserves of blood pulsated into his head; he felt his feet go cold and numb before his mind lost contact with them altogether. With his body weight now pinching against the leather straps binding his shoulders in place, his arms were also losing any sensation of touch. Unfortunately, his backbone was very much alert to the epidural needle attempting to lever its way between his third and fourth lumbar vertebrae.

It was rumoured by acolytes and enthusiasts alike that this stage in the proceedings was the most painful; probably made more so by his spine being straight, rather than curving to open the gap between the bones.

A brush of the needle tip against a nerve ending sent a razor of pain slicing down his left leg; any drowsiness due to the blood loss was well and truly negated. Worms burrowing into his back announced the introduction of the catheter; the headache would start soon as his cerebrospinal fluid was drained into the tureen containing his already cooling and coagulating blood, and the meagre amount of cloudy urine he'd been able to produce at the evidential hearing.

"In light of your co-operation, and admission of guilt, it is the court's recommendation that only one eye be siphoned."

The amplified voice echoed around the chamber and caused the metal of the draining table to resonate against Dave's ear; his head was turned away from the speaker, but it must have been the Secular Justice of the Peace. "Do I have the consent of the Father?"

This was largely a formality. It had taken a couple of hundred years, but the Religious JPs were now starting to bow, de facto, to the legal advice of their civil counterparts.

Another voice, somewhat disappointed: "Yes, yes." It continued quietly, "Not that it'll make any difference..." The coppery clanging had to mean the frustrated priest was testily stirring the pot to keep the blood in its liquid state.

A court technician looped a webbing strap around Dave's skull and cinched it down tight. Tape was pressed hard onto his left eyelid causing a purple nebula of imagined light to coruscate around his visual cortex. Tears seeped from the duct as the eye was tugged open.

"You know... this stage could have been avoided if you'd accepted my terms," the priest whispered in Dave's ear.

It was a long standing old-wives tale that you could bribe the Father into taking your tears in place of the vitreous humour of the eye; from a distance, nobody would know. Dave hadn't believed it when he'd first heard the rumour, but he believed now. Unfortunately, he was utterly bereft of funds after settling the legal bills. Not that that had done him any good either.

Without the liquid to hold the eyeball in shape, Dave's vision lost focus. He felt the skin around the socket pucker inwards while his eye deflated. He'd be left with nothing but a kaleidoscope dance of shattered light teasing his left retina, bewildering his perception for the rest of his life. Given that this was likely to be not much more than an hour, it didn't really matter.

The cannula was re-opened, and his remaining blood began to drain into the trough that ran on the floor around the table. He pitched forward harder against the shoulder straps, head down, as the bench was canted close to vertical; his brain would remain oxygenated and therefore conscious until the last drop of pressurized blood leaked away.

Knowing that he was no longer much more than a bag of depleting fluid, he let his arms swing downwards to maximize the rate of blood flow out of his collapsing circulatory system and thereby speed his passing.

Shuffled footsteps insinuated their way into his muffled hearing. The acolytes were queuing up to imbibe their share of justice; his justice.

"And so," intoned the Father, "Justice by God's will, and the will of His people. From Matthew chapter 26, verse 28: 'For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.'

Leviticus, chapter 17, verse 11: 'For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.' And it is righteous that as you sin, so shall you atone."

The semi-secular side of justice continued, "From Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 18: 'And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery'.”

The Father replied, “John, chapter 7, verse 38: ‘He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ And thus as you have been found guilty by due process of the court of being drunk, so have you been righteously drunk. The water of your body has been spilled. Ebrius Ad Mortem. "

And finally, both in chorus, "May God have mercy on your soul."

Just before he slipped under the rippled surface of insensibility, Dave had one last coherent thought: "Bloody literalists... Sod 'em and their Seventh Day Advent... If the Catholics had won that glass of wine would have been free... and I'd have got a biscuit..."