Figgy’s Reviews > The Mouth of the Dark > Status Update

“What are the Underborn?” he asked in a tired voice.
“I don’t know much about them,” Nicola confessed. “If Ivory were still alive.…” She gave her head a single shake, as if to refocus her thoughts. “They show up in Shadow from time to time. They look like real people, walk and talk like them, but they’re artificial. Robots made out of flesh and blood instead of metal and circuitry.”

He started running forward to help Emory, not caring if she was the real one or not, only knowing that she looked like his daughter and that was all that mattered.


Uh... right...

surgical tools, knives, hammers, screwdrivers, hatchets, axes, electric carving knives, blowtorches, barbed wire, chainsaws, handguns, shotguns, rifles, and compound bows. There were also glass and plastic containers of chemicals which Jayce assumed held bleach, acid, kerosene, gasoline, and all manner of poisons, from those that killed instantly to those that took their time.

[2/2]

The stench here was even worse than in Carnality. The level stank of coppery blood and raw meat, and the air fairly vibrated with the agony of those whose flesh was being violated. The tables and chairs were metal with built-in gutters to catch and channel blood into floor drains. Each ‘station’ had a table with an assortment of equipment laid out:

[1/2]

There was no love, no tenderness, not even the simple joy of engaging in a highly pleasurable physical activity with another. This was mindless satiation, the exploitation of flesh for its own sake, taking without any thought of giving in return. And even if Emory herself wasn’t present, the thought that her image was out there being used like disposable tissues to ejaculate into sickened him.

They were shaped in enigmatic, even alien configurations that made their specific functions impossible to guess at, but they all shared the same basic purpose: to take their users to the highest level of sexual fulfillment that was physically possible without killing them. And who knows? Maybe even past that point and back again.

“What do we do now?” Jayce asked. “Start going up to people and asking if they’ve seen Emory?”
“It would make more sense to check with the owners first,” Nicola said.

WTF? Why would you think you'd walk up to strangers in a sex shop and ask about your daughter when, you know, you spoke to the owner of the bookshop when looking for her there??? Writing logic fail.

Jayce wasn’t the most worldly of men when it came to sex, but he didn’t consider himself a prude by any means. Still, there were several section labels for sexual proclivities he was unfamiliar with: Autopsychotic Degradation, Molecular Bestiality, Genital Deconstruction

[1/2]

“What are the Underborn?” he asked in a tired voice.
“I don’t know much about them,” Nicola confessed. “If Ivory were still alive.…” She gave her head a single shake, as if to refocus her thoughts. “They show up in Shadow from time to time. They look like real people, walk and talk like them, but they’re artificial. Robots made out of flesh and blood instead of metal and circuitry.”

Theron’s body remained unchanged below the neck, but his head had become black ash. When it flaked away, it didn’t leave behind a bleeding stump. Instead, the top of the neck was covered with smooth, unmarked flesh, as if the head hadn’t been destroyed so much as unmade. Now that his head was gone, Theron’s body fell limp.