The limping corpse struggled forward, rasping out that continual gasp of desire they make when they see food. They do not learn. I waited as the links, one by one, lifted from their pile. I knew right where to stand. The chain pulled taut, and the zombie, struggling a moment, reached out a worm eaten hand toward me. The rotting fingers danced before my face as I stared into the colorless eyes of the dead man.
The dance was at the climax. I only had to wait. It would struggle, and in that struggle, call upon the vestiges of the mind still there. As it awoke itself, it would remember its tongue.
“Feed me,” came the airy command.
“No,” I felt a twinge of a smile playing at the corner of my lips. I waited, watching as the remnants of its face went through all the contortions of anger and frustration. A sudden calm, and the grasping hand fell to its side.
“You are cruel,” the voice was more human now.
“Necessity,” I answered. “Just as you need flesh, I need information.”
“Then you abandon me to the darkness and the endless hunger. Let me die.”
“Necessity,” I repeated. “Answer my questions, and I’ll leave. You’ll forget I was here, wander back to your corner, and know nothing.”
“Until you have more questions.”
“Until we have all the answers.”
“And when you have them?”
“Death, release. I am not cruel.”
“When you have them, when you know,” the dead man’s head shook from side to side, his flayed bit of cheek flapping open and closed. “You will find an end to your chain, this edge. You cannot know what I know while staying out of reach. When I have tasted what I strive for, I no longer am, am I? Then I am the other thing, the mindless thing. I am only because of my want. You are because of your want. All that I know, you can know. Just come a little closer.”
Tale Told 