The boy lost his footing and fell down. Although he'd gashed
his leg, it was the jolt of the impact on the ground which his brain reacted to
first. He burst into tears. He called for his mother, for such was his shock,
he'd momentarily forgotten that she'd walked out on her nuclear family and
would never hear his plaintive cries. He called for his father, yet he too
failed to heed the call and ride to the rescue. The boy was on his own.
By now the tears were streaming so heavily, they were
running into his mouth. They were salty on his lips and tongue. His nose was
also emitting fluid. In wiping it with his arm, the mucus was smeared against
his lips and again he tasted his insurgent self. He faintly recognised the
taste from the smell of being housed in his olfactory apparatus. It had similar
sapidity to his tears, but was more glutinous and full-bodied. It was clammy
and warm on his tongue.
Finally his attention was wrenched to the pain in his leg.
He was small and supple enough to bring the wound tenderly up to his lips. He
sucked it to staunch the bleed. The blood hit him with an acrid, metallic
taste. It made him want to retch. But he managed to maintain his labia over the
laceration, until the bloodflow clotted and ceased.
*
The boy's father fell down. His son strode over to him and
knelt down by his prostrate form. His father had been crying, but in his
collapse the tears had ceased. Only the dirt trails down his cheeks gave
evidence of their existence. The boy inclined his head towards the limp face of
his father and flicked his tongue out, tracing the tear tracks. His father's
dried tears had no taste to them. No saltiness or anything saline about them at
all.
Mucus had collected under his father's bottom lip. The boy
dabbed the pad of his little finger into the viscid spherule and felt it adhere
to him. He slowly pulled his finger away, drawing the bead into an elongated
string. He brought his hand to his mouth, folded all but his pinkie down and
smeared some of the mucus on his tongue. While he could sense its consistency
and texture, it to lacked for any sapidity.
There was a gout of blood from a depression in the back of
his father's skull. The concavity took two of his fingers to span. Withdrawing
them, he could see that they were covered in his father's gore. He rubbed his
fingers together and the powdery red cruor was brushed from his skin. He
returned his digits to the indentation and drove them through the fibrous
plasma that had started to clot. His fingers could feel a warm, thick fluid
beneath. He ensured they were coated in the serum by whirling them around,
before once again withdrawing them. He followed the prints in his fingers, now
cameo'd in red. He rubbed them together, but this time nothing fell away into
the air.
He smiled and inserted those bloodied fingers deep into his
mouth and brought his tongue up to plaster and plate the blood around every
part of the inside of his mouth. There was no metallic tang, no smack of iron
forcing him to wince. Nothing at all. And yet he relished it, every last layer
clotting his own chinks and clefts in the membrane of his cheeks; the pits and
perforations in the roof of his palate; the fissures and hollows in his gums
and between the teeth. It tasted of ... Victory!
