Fusion: Part Two
The funeral came a week later.
After I found Tom my dad called the paramedics who pronounced his body dead on the spot. I say Tom’s body and not Tom for a reason which I’ll get to. But for now I want to tell you about the rest of my family, and how we all dealt with Tom’s death.
The paramedics didn’t know how to classify the death, and neither did we. They decided to list it as a suicide, wounds all seemed self inflicted and there was no evidence for an accident because the positioning of his body was too intentional. They ignored his PC, there was so much blood I don’t think they even realised some of it was coming from the computer itself. The day after we threw his computer away and sold his monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphones, all of it. None of us could bear to think about it anymore. I could hear my mum sobbing as she cleaned the blood from Tom’s bedroom and my dad struggled to wipe Moonshine’s face clean without breaking down himself. They were just as clueless as me as to what had happened, and couldn’t handle thinking about it for more than a couple minutes at a time. Dinner had been silent since that day, even when Leah came over it didn’t brighten any moods, it only added a fourth member to the silent suffering that engraved itself in the walls of my home. I leant on my friends a lot during that period, I would cry in voice calls with them and they would do their best to comfort me, often ending up in us playing Quiplash to settle me down and get me in a better mood. They may not have been the most openly sentimental people, but they knew how to make me laugh, and that’s all I needed.
As my family were planning the funeral I thought about that word, suicide. I didn’t disagree with it, but I couldn’t in my right mind admit it to be the truth either. My brother had done something to himself, but it wasn’t of his own volition. I was upset at my family’s reluctance to get the police involved, it felt like the obvious thing to do in the wake of a death like that of my brother’s. But I think they just wanted the feeling to pass by as quickly as possible, and to not dwell on it any more than was needed. Especially my mum, she drowned herself in her work as a distraction, if she kept her nose to the grindstone she’d never need to look up. I tried reporting it to the police but I didn’t have much evidence on hand aside from the fact that there was that kid that watched the same video that got dragged out of his home, but the police’s reasoning was correlation doesn’t imply causation and that if I had more substantial evidence they would do something about it. I was pissed, my brother was dead and no one would do anything, let alone willingly acknowledge it. Leah shared my sentiments, we went on long walks together and cried on park benches, we would put on music we both liked and vent all our anger out, because god knows we would have torn that house to the ground if we vented it there.
The chapel was cold and echoey. Tom’s coffin laid behind the altar in a closed thatch casket, ready to be burnt. There was a framed photo of Tom on an easel, a photo I took myself when I was with him in our sitting room, he was slightly hunched over a table doing a jigsaw puzzle, he was facing the camera, and giving a soft smile, his short black hair swept to the side slightly. It was nice to see him that way after the weeks that had come before, it was the side of him we all missed the most. And the side we chose to represent him that day. I didn’t listen to much of the eulogies. I was only thinking about what had happened to him, and what I could do to get someone to listen to me.
While Tom was being cremated I had my idea. We had dumped the PC off at the city scrapyard, my dad wore gloves as he dragged it out of the backseat and onto the dry dirt below, coagulated blood dropped off different parts in chunks and a thin layer of red powder coated the tips of his shoes. We left it there and drove home. I thought that if it was still there, I could take a few photos of it and give them to the police as my evidence. I’d need to bring a couple friends, and we’d all need to sneak out at night, but if we managed to pull it off it would give me exactly what I needed, it would put my head to rest. As my careful thoughts closed and my mind came back to the immediacy of my surroundings, I stared at the clouds. Wires of smoke were spiralling upwards from the funeral crematorium.
Within a couple days I was on the train to the scrapyard, by my side was Ashley, Sofia, and Lucas. It didn’t take much convincing for them to come along when I explained the whole situation. If they weren’t coming for my sake they were coming to see what I was talking about. All four of us stepped off the train at Mitcham Junction and began walking to our destination. It was pitch black for the most part, the occasional flicker of a faulty street light would shimmer lightly against the wet pavement, broken glass lined the curb and there was a thick scent of cigarette smoke that stained the air.
Upon arriving at the scrapyard we stared out through the gate at the metal hills and valleys that the PC was somewhere between. We sent Ashley out to check the attention of the security guards. Shortly after he ran back to us, panting and smiling.
“He’s distracted. The monitors seemed out of whack and he looked like he was fixing them so I think we’re good.” There was a slight shake in his voice, there were tinges of adrenaline running through all of us.
“Alright, cool.” I whispered back to him, a great big smile across my face. Despite the reason we were all here, stepping out of line never stopped being fun. The moment we took a step forward a clatter and the sound of small trinkets clicking down one of the mounds stopped us in our tracks. A small orange tabby ran out from the pile, looking disheveled, skin and fur covering the place where one of its eyes should’ve been. It looked at us tentatively before running off in the direction of the security office. Sofia and I let out an ‘aww’ in unison when we saw it. Lucas shifted in place slightly, he never admitted it but he was always a bit scared around cats. I remembered him lifting his legs up onto my sofa whenever Moonshine was in the room at my house. I’d pick her up and tell him she was just looking for attention and in response he would always begrudgingly accept her affection.
Regardless, we walked on into the scrapyard, treading carefully so as to not disturb the stray pieces of metal plating and pieces of torn machinery beneath our feet. All we had was our phone torches and to them, a vague idea of what we were actually looking for. We all were fumbling around through the maze around us, too scared to climb to the top of any of the piles for fear of being spotted and getting into trouble. Eventually we threw caution to the wind and began pulling piles of scrap from one another, lifting sheets and kicking away chunks of metal to search for some indication of the computer. Through our searching Sofia found the PC and called out to us to come and see it. The second she did, my smile faded and I felt sick. It was in the middle of the dry dirt between 4 massive piles of metal parts, like the centre piece of a colosseum. All four of us walked over to it and saw it laid on its side surrounded by dried blood not dissimilar in smell to that of the copper parts that surrounded it. We put our heads above it to look down inside the open case. Thick wires were tangled with each other and were writhing like restless snakes or worms atop a flower bed, searching, cloying for something to eat.
“Holy shit.” Lucas said what the rest of them were thinking. Between their wonder I felt a pit in my stomach, seeing them so enraptured with the machine that killed my brother made me feel resentful, but even as tears pricked my eyes I couldn’t bring myself to reject their curiosity entirely. Sofia grimaced at the sight, she always would try to put on a brave face, even when it made her seem stubborn and often that brave face would fall away too quickly to count.
“Let’s just get a couple photos and leave, seeing it again is making me feel disgusting.” Simultaneously I saw all their faces fall into embarrassed realisation. We all pulled our phones out and snapped a few photos of it and sent them to a group chat between us.
Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief that our mission was over, I heard Ashley yelp.
“Lucas, what the fuck are you doing?!” I looked up from my phone to see Lucas reaching into the computer, and pulling up one of the wires with his fist clenched around it. I screamed for him to stop immediately but he looked at me like I was going crazy. He told me he just wanted to see what was underneath it all, but the moment he finished his sentence he was pulled in by the wires. They coiled around his whole arm and before we could even react we heard a series of thick wet snaps followed by an agonising scream. His arm now contorted into a variety of unnatural angles, blood drooled between the wires onto the floor. Sofia threw herself forward to help but I pushed her out of the way, seeing the wires lift themselves up to try and meet her.
“Back up from it!” I yelled, tears now flowing from my eyes. I had to come up with a solution quickly. “Guys, get something long and sharp, try and cut up the wires from afar or at least just break the PC, and call the police. I’m going to run and get the guard!” All of us were sick to our stomachs, a thick mask of nausea and dissociation preventing us from considering what was happening right in front of us. Lucas’ screams filled the air as his leg was claimed and swiftly twisted into segments by the wires. I turned and I ran, hearing Ashley and Sofia’s panicked beckons for Lucas to hold on as they noisily threw scrap to the side searching for an appropriate weapon.
I sprinted back to the entrance and from there found my way to the security office. As I approached I saw the officer slumped over on his desk, the walls of the doorway obscuring his head. Around him, slowly pulsing light was fading into different colours and shining over his body. I yelled out to him to no response, my voice choked by tears.
As I stepped inside the office I saw the guard’s body. His head was laying on his desk, slack jawed. Wires were running through his skin, one piercing his eye and emerging out the back of his skull before leading into the various monitors, pulsing and leaking blood. The one-eyed orange tabby was curled up next to the officer’s head, sleeping soundly. In the corner of the room I noticed a small feeding bowl full of uneaten cat food. The guard’s skin was pale, the video playing on all of the monitors painting his face in all of their colours. I felt sick to my stomach and as I looked up at the monitors amongst the slideshow this time was something that took me off guard and deepened the churning tension that was brewing in my chest. I saw myself, sitting on the stool in the living room, holding up a camera to my eye. Before I could fully register what it meant it flashed onto the next image. I broke my gaze from the screen and sprinted out of the door, going through the piles once more to find my way back to the computer. As I ran back I could hear Ashley and Sofia screaming at the top of their lungs, their sobs piercing through the noises of flesh being rended and bones being snapped and crushed. However, through the noise I had failed to notice that Lucas’ screams had now ceased.
As I stumbled into the space between the piles I saw Ashley and Sofia clinging to one another, looking away from the computer and hiding in one another’s shoulders, inconsolable and hyperventilating through clenched teeth, vaguely attempting to comfort one another in the wake of what had just taken place before their eyes. Ashley’s phone was on the ground face up, 999 was on the screen, vibrating and ringing to no response until the call failed. There was a long piece of rebar that was splattered with blood and laid bent a couple meters from Sofia’s feet. The PC was now standing upright, soaked in blood that formed a thick sanguine pool below it. Its case was completely closed, the only thing attached to it was a thick yellow ethernet cable that ran directly down into the dirt. A wet pulsating squish noise emanated from it. I looked at my friends, tears pouring down my cheeks.
“What the fuck happened?! Where’s Lucas?” I choked out the words, hoping somehow they’d have an answer that was different, hoping to god that it was fucking anything other than what it was. They remained sobbing in one another's arms, cloying to one another, the only response was that of a grief stricken cry from Sofia as she pushed her face further into Ashley’s shoulder. The world began to get muffled around me, my vision and hearing a haze of sobs and dissociation. I cloyed at my hair and looked down at my bloody shoes, I gagged and cried and gripped my hair tighter, my fingers shaking around it tightly, plucking small strands from my scalp, the pain distracting me, taking me away from everything, the mistake I had made taking him here, the friend I had just seen mutilated, I gripped tighter and tighter and then.
“Help” Silence fell over us.
“Lucas?” Ashley choked out, pulling away from Sofia. All of our eyes locked onto the PC.
“Help” An achingly slow and bitcrushed voice arose from the speakers, it was Lucas.
“Oh god.” I approached the case slowly, I was on the verge of throwing up, liquid boiling up to my throat before I swallowed it down and placed one foot in front of another. “Lucas? Can you hear me?”
“Heeeeeelllllllllllllllllp meeee” His words extended grotesquely, each syllable crackling and glitching in tone as the speakers let out his pleas. I picked up the piece of rebar off the floor and extended it out towards the PC, I lifted it slightly and smacked the lip of the case. The case fell open and with it piles of organs and chunks of brain spilled out onto the dirt, a small flood of blood fell out and spread across the ground. I choked and threw up onto the floor, stomach acid flowing up through my throat and out of my mouth, splattering on my shoes. I spat and wiped my eyes of tears. Spitting out the remaining bile I looked back up at the scene in front of me and noticed that each piece of viscera was wired up to the PC, blood vessels transitioning into wires that pulsed restlessly. His heart buzzed as it throbbed violently on the ground and his lungs were filling and compressing slowly, attached to a fan that was blowing moist warm air on the rest of the parts. A stuttering groan emerged from the speakers. We stared in horrified silence and backed away slowly. As we did, the wires inside the PC slowly coiled, dragging the viscera across the floor and pulling it back inside of the case. Sinew and muscle stretched from the computer and latched to the case before picking it up and fixing it back onto the rest of the computer, sealing it shut once more.
“Oh fuck, what do we do?” Ashley muttered.
“I-I don’t know what to do. I’m gonna call my mum.” I just wanted this all to be over with, I wanted to go home and see my parents. I wanted my brother back. I wanted to forget about all of this.
“There’s no connection here, that's why I couldn’t call the police.” Ashley’s voice was monotonous, detached. Sofia shook her head.
“Let’s take a photo of that wire, and the blood around the PC. Tomorrow we can hand it in to the police and report everything we’ve seen. They’ll have to do something about it.” Her voice had become stern, each word flew from her mouth as if she took too long to speak each sentence she would begin crying again.
“And what do we tell Lucas’ parents?! They’re going to find out one way or another!” My head was roaring with unbearable stress. I saw Lucas’ parents in my head, walking to their son’s room, going to wake him up and seeing his bed completely empty. I imagined standing in front of their horrified faces, explaining that their child was now mangled and stuffed inside a computer, and that he could feel all of it.
“We cross that bridge when we get to it!” She snapped at me before stepping forward and taking a few photos of the ethernet cable and blood. She sent them to the group chat and began walking back to the entrance. “Come on. Let’s just go home.” Her shoulders were shaking and there was a quake in her voice.
“And let him suffer in there?” I yelled back at Sofia. Just then, Ashley tapped my back and handed me the piece of rebar again.
“He doesn’t have to.” His face was a twisted mess of grief, tears stained the collar of his shirt and his eyes were red and glassy, he was biting his lip to stop it from shaking.
“What? No! We’re not killing our friend!”
“Then how do you plan to stop him from suffering?”
“We need him alive, Ashley. If the police come here to investigate and they find it looking different to the pictures, what do you think they’re gonna say?!”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know! But this is our only option if we want to end his suffering.” He forced the rebar into my hands. I looked at it, considering the option, I looked at the PC. There was nothing more I wanted to do than to destroy it, to end all of the suffering it had caused. It had taken my brother, it had taken my friend, and at that moment I knew that it would continue to hurt more people. But I just couldn’t, I couldn’t kill my friend, and even if we did destroy it, it wouldn’t end anything. I threw the rebar to the floor, it clattered loudly and reverberated around the scrapyard. We stood silently in the dark, streams of blood crept through the dirt towards us. I shook my head slowly at Ashley, and began walking towards the entrance.
The next day I sat on my bed for an hour flicking through the photos we took of the PC and the guard. I winced back tears, got dressed, and walked outside. I was going to hand everything to the police, that was the plan, and quitting at that point would’ve been a disservice to everyone that had suffered for the evidence I now had. One of the photos had caught my eye now I had a slightly clearer mind. The one of that bright yellow cable leading into the dirt. It had to have been connected to something, I just didn’t know what, or where, or who. The air was bitterly cold, the streets were grey and the sky had dulled into an unsatisfying shade of baby blue. The tips of my shoes were freckled with tiny spots of red that slowly smeared as I dragged my feet across the damp concrete. As I walked I noticed a small crowd in the distance. I took off my headphones and immediately heard the loud commotion coming from them. As I got closer I noticed they were looking up at the telephone wires stretched out from pole to pole. The sun blocked me from being able to properly see what they were looking at, I began to jog closer, as I did the wires slowly rose in my vision and witnessed four silhouettes emerge from the sun. Bodies, hanging in the wires overhead.
Joining the crowd I looked up and tried to make out who it was, it was no one I knew personally but I had recognised them as being from my neighbourhood. Their bodies were hanging from the wires like puppets. The wires passing through their limbs and linking to their heads, causing their bodies to rest in contorted positions, like people in freefall. Their faces were restful and unaware of the crowd below them, like a peaceful sleep. Circles of blood emerged from the wounds that the wires ran through and slowly dripped down onto the pavement.
After seemingly endless minutes of taking in the sight, hearing the distraught and confused reactions of the people around me. I felt the soft push of three cats on my legs, nuzzling into me softly, smearing blood from their mouths onto my jeans. I looked up from them, and with that, the police finally arrived.
Posted Dec 7, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC