Corpse boy watched her, silent, his jaw clenched as she slept soundly. His skin had thinned, veins visible like ink beneath parchment, illuminating his sunken skull like face. Maybe he was decaying again as he slowly grew weary. 


"Which part?" Corpse Boy asked when she woke. 


"My ribs." she said. "I need to replace them."


"I'll give you mine." 


Corpse Boy made an incision from his sternum to his lower abdomen, wincing during the process. He cut away through layers of skin, muscle and nerves exposing his ribcage. With his fingers he threaded through blood and flesh, breaking a rib and tearing a single piece off his spine. 


Working quickly the scalpel then slipped into her chest with a sickening ease. The scar tissue had softened, weakened from so many previous incisions. The smell of rot and decay assaulted their senses as he split open her chest cavity. Then he dug his hands inside her. 


Her lungs pulsed weakly underneath her ribcage, the organ slowly collapsing. He slid his hands inside her chest and clamped the unfamiliar rib onto her ribcage. Blood pooled thickly around her torso, dripping off the table in a steady motion. 


He packed the cavity with gauze, stitching her chest closed crudely, ribs pressing awkward against the seams. She coughed, spraying blood from her lips gasping for air.


The Corpse Boy could only watch as pieces of stomach, livers, and intestines were added to her insides. Her skin became a patchwork like a quilt, seams crossing over her flesh. Sometimes she convulsed violently as her body rejected what he'd given her. Despite this she wanted more. 


"I'm becoming whole." Moira said, voice hoarse and teeth wet with blood. 


As time went on the bodies were added to the basement, discarded like scraps of meat. The air was dense, choking with iron, bile, and rot. The fridge in the corner was stacked with organs—some wrapped in plastic, others left bare and shriveling. This was just in case an organ stopped functioning so she had extra just in case. 


Moira no longer looked human.


She reached for the corpse boy, bloody fingers smearing his arm. "And when I'm finished, when every part of me has been remade—then I'll cut you open. And I'll take you, too. I'll put you inside me where you belong."


For the first time, he stepped back.


The next harvest Moira wanted to replace her hands. She decided they didn't belong to her anymore. That her hands were alienated separate from her body. She'd replaced organs, flesh and skin, but never a limb. But again she believed her hands were a rotting corpse and needed new ones so Corpse Boy went out to look for the perfect match.


"She's perfect." Moira said, her gaze falling on the next donor who was unconscious. 


He hesitated but he sawed through bone until both of the victims hands were detached from her injured body. "Do it." And Corpse Boy began the painful process of taking her hands, removing the limbs from her body. After he passed the bone, the skin peeled away like old wallpaper.


Corpse Boy then attached the victims hands to Moira. She tried flexing them but they barely moved. Her new limbs were malfunctioning. Acting on its own without command. 

The corpse boy stood motionless holding Moira's original hands as his own hands, soaked and trembling, hung uselessly at his sides.


"Why?" he whispered, almost to himself.


"Why what?"


"Why are you still doing this? You're not alive. You'll never be alive." Corpse Boy said. 


She began cutting herself open when he refused. Clumsy slices across her thighs, peeling back layers to see how far she could go before fainting. She chewed on tendons, swallowed bits of fat. She stuffed pieces of other bodies inside herself, forcing them into wounds that rotted before they could heal.


"Help me sew them tighter," she begged. "Pieces are falling off of me!" 


He obeyed. He couldn't stop himself. He stitched her tighter, stuffed gauze and organs into her like she was a sack splitting at the seams.