Mornings
There is still no pain. He signals lightly with the remaining fingers on his left hand. Drowsiness is setting in - he's been awake for hours. A second, two, and the surgeon notices his feeble wave. A grating shudder against bone, and the cutting stops.
He hears the click of tools against the table, like the whispered scuttling of a thousand metal spiders crawling towards him. Scalpels are put away upon a blood-soaked aluminum tray. The surgeon takes three steps from the table, and collapses upon the floor, a pile of lifeless rags and bone and flesh.
Then the whispered voices come...
~ Pain? Thinking Pain? Dawn comes. You must not sleep yet... ~
He looks over at his voice box, pinned to the table near his head. Concentrate, he tells himself, will the blood. A brief gout of thick, corrupted crimson, and a rattling hiss rasps from his lungs. His voice sounds as one who has seen beyond the grave, to the worms which lie beneath.
Insanity and bile drip through the silences between his words.
"Time ... for ... bed ..."
~ Not yet. Not yet. Do you need Blood? ~
A nod fails utterly. His shoulders are not well attached - his head will not rise from the table. Instead, he burbles, a death rattle brought from his deepest depths. He can almost hear the voice grin, while the whispers break and cackle in the listening distance.
~ Blood ~
Nearby, mere feet from where his corpse lies, a great glass bottle shatters. Blood washes the floor in a sanguine tide. The smell hits his nostrils. 'Those still work,' he thinks bemusedly. Then the hunger hits. His desire pulls his butchered form from the table, tearing past pins and ties alike. He spills onto the floor. 'I didn't feel that,' he thinks bemusedly, detached.
His body sucks at the floor, trying to draw the blood into itself.
Then, slowly, impossibly, it heals. Tendon knits to tendon, flesh knits to flesh. The strength of the blood pulls his corpse, sucking against the cold tiles of the draining floor, back into itself. His arms, with fresh strength, gather the ruin which once were his intestines, and shovel them back into his cavernous abdomen. These last do not wish to remain. Nothing holds them in place save his fist.
The voices, the whispers sound curious and amused in the back of his skull.
~ Bandages? ~

He crawls across the white floor to a cabinet nearby, licking at each crimson smear upon the floor, trying not to waste any of this strength. Opening the cabinet, he drags free a tangle of bandages. Slowly wrapping them about his torso, a mummy returning to life, with a brackish stain spreading across the linen wherever he touches it.
~ News. News before rest. ~
The whispers grow louder - insistent. They surround him. The glare of lights overhead are too bright. He wants to sleep.
"What news?"
~ A Jew. A Jew rules the city. A new one. It brings with it one of the Hidden, to crush those who oppose it. ~
He sighs. Yet someone new to meet, to learn, to master. He has so little time for his own studies, these days. Perhaps if he ignores this one for a short while, it will go away. Most of them do.
"The last Jew..." his fingers work his jaw into place as it slips "...seemed good enough. We've never had trouble." His drawl echoes oddly from the tiled walls. His voicebox is not the right size. He concentrates, dreams of Blood. "Why the concern?"
~ No killing this one. No more trouble. Yet. Grandmama says so. Leave this one. For now. ~
A glance into empty air. "That's not news. What is it?"
A pause.
~ This Jew has sent a letter of greeting. The letter was found inside the door. We do not know ... how. Until we do ... stay away from it. ~
"Ah had no intentions otherwise." His bare foot slips on the last traces of blood which stain the floor. Recovering, he reaches for a bundle of clothes laid neatly upon the counter. "We'll just watch. Ain't no need of gettin' Momma angry. Don't worry. What could go wrong?"
Brief silence. Then the door at the end of the room swings open of its own accord. The lights flicker briefly, humming with otherworldly power. Then the whispering grows again.
~ Get some rest, Cousin. We'll continue the examination tonight. ~
And with that he staggers upstairs to bed.