Edenflesh

Edenflesh (EF) is flesh that came from the Garden of Eden. Semantically it’s very straightforward. In every other way it defies everything I know about the human body, even after studying under V. No recognizable nervous tissue or veins or anything; it’s pink, featureless dough. It smells like an orchard in autumn. If you squeeze it long enough, it bleeds, but if you leave it in a puddle of its own blood, it’ll soak it up. If you put it in a glass container, the whole thing starts vibrating after a few minutes. Victor has half a dozen jars full at this point; he had to dig a hole in the basement and pack them in dirt to keep them silent.

There were 3.2 pounds of it in my body, and we extracted all of it. V recommended that I be sedated for the extraction process but if he wants me to help him with this, I have to see it working first-hand. I also asked him to try extracting from different points on my body for different periods of time to confirm his own tests. Our findings are:

• It hurts. A lot. We spent two hours testing the extraction process and it felt like my body fit an entire menses cycle in those hours.
• The pain is directly proportional to the speed of the extraction, as is the scarring. It would take fifteen minutes at the fastest rate to extract a pound of EF, according to V, but trying it without sedation would cause so much pain that it might put me into shock. Sometimes it’s good to take his worry into account.
• Pain increases the further the extraction point is from the heart. I could withstand the pain for four minutes on the torso. Five seconds on the palm and I almost yowled like a cat.
• The maximum rate of extraction at a given point seems to depend on a combination of size and muscle. Large amounts of bone (skull, ribcage, spine) impede the process.

I learned a lot that might help V succeed at this mad mission of his. It also practically destroyed me. We spent two hours testing and another two hours easing the pain and burnishing the scar tissue. Even then, I was still sore and my eyes were still red from tears; I had to tell my parents that I fell climbing a tree again. And at the end of it, I had a mass of trembling flesh that made me nauseous just looking at it.

I think V hated it. All of it. Every time I cried or yelped, he’d wilt like a dying plant. He’d cut short a test for my sake before I would. He grumbles under his breath when he’s getting the extraction device set up; I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. The only time he didn’t seem disgusted was when we finally bottled the edenflesh for storage. L must be an incredible woman for him to go through this for her.

Next time we’re going to go over the mechanics of the extraction device. V knows far more about applied theology than I do; I don’t know how much I’ll be able to understand. Still, it’s clear that the main obstacle to his goals is the limitations of the device; if I can improve it, he’ll succeed. If M is serious about changing her mind and working with Victor, we might be able to-

[Rest of the page is damaged, along with the four behind it. Burn marks?]