They were good at their work. They didn’t know about the lungs above them that filled with autumn air, or the stomach that churned yesterday’s apple pie, or the brain that dreamed of mortgage payments and lost loves. They only knew the chamber, the river, and each other.
They just knew the song.
Lub pushed. But the river felt thick. Sludgy. lub and dub sound
And then, from a tiny side-channel they had never noticed before—a hidden alley in the city of flesh—a third voice whispered.
The dam broke. The sludge flowed into the side-channel, where it would be dissolved and forgotten. The pressure eased. The House of Ribs sighed. They were good at their work
One day, a tremor ran through the House of Ribs. Not the usual shudder of a sprint or the jolt of a surprise. This was a slow, wrong kind of quiver. A sticky, hesitant hesitation.
Panic was a foreign sensation, but it flooded their world like cold tar. Something was in the river. Little rafts of chalk and fat, rogue travelers that should have been swept away to the far shores of the liver and lungs. Instead, they were damming the stream. They just knew the song
Weave.