Temporary Uterus

[Note – this is a scene from "Invalid Item"  that didn’t fit into the final narrative. It probably occurred when Sam was 'shadowing' people from each Terrace department after she'd arrived. A Sue's Story take on a certain fanfiction cliché…]


         
         "Where are we going?” Sam nervously voiced the question as she trailed along behind the striding figure, just far enough back to avoid treading on his swirling cloak.
         “Field archives. Darek isn’t in, and I don’t trust anyone else with his filing system.”
         “Why?”
         “It can get vicious,” Richard stopped so suddenly in front of a very plain door that Sam nearly collided with his back. He glanced round at her.
         “Just don’t touch anything, and you’ll – probably – be fine.” He swung the door back, and Sam blinked. There was nothing there. Or rather, there way no doorway there – it looked like it had been bricked up. Richard said nothing, but drew his spork and ran the tips lightly down the mortar in the centre until they reached a thin crack. He shoved the spork into the crack and twisted it like a key. There was a dull, stony scrape as he removed it again, and then the bricks began to move, folding back seamlessly on themselves until they had formed a low archway. He holstered the spork and stooped through, beckoning Sam to follow him.
         The room they emerged into was… interesting. It seemed to be another one of those innumerate areas the Terrace had that were considerably larger within than the space they had allocated to them outside. Sam had stopped being surprised at such things weeks ago, and instead focused her curiosity on the room’s contents. It had two levels, the top mostly consisting of walkways bracketed onto the walls, lined with heavily laden bookshelves and with a series of ladders leading up to them. The ground floor was a chaotic mix of tables, and benches, all covered in stacks of paper and strange equipment. There were a couple of people in there, all working away at their tables with a silent industriousness that Sam couldn’t help but suspect had become so focused the moment Richard stepped through the door.
         She followed him through the room towards the back, where there was an aggregation of desks, filing cabinets and even more shelves of strange things. He motioned her to stand still as he went over to one of the cabinets, wand drawn, and proceeded to poke it in a careful fashion until, apparently satisfied, he opened a draw and starting to search through the interior.
         That left Sam with very little to do. She fidgeted for a while, but by the time Richard moved onto his third cabinet, and narrowed avoided having his eyebrows removed by a sudden jet of blue fire emitted from the keyhole, she got the impression they were going to be here for some time. She started to look around and moved over to the nearest desk, careful not to touch anything. There was a lot of paper covered in spidery writing, and some rather strange illustrations, but nothing particularly interesting so she turned her attention to the shelves.
         Very quickly, she started to wish she hadn’t. Whoever owned these seemed to have a fascination with pickled… things. Big glass jars full of greenish-brown liquid were crowded onto the shelves, their discoloured contents turning lazily in internal currents. Sam’s gaze slid over a jar of eyeballs – all with cat-slit pupils – then one full of what looked like pointed ears, and she was about to turn away when something new caught her attention. Curiosity overwhelming her disgust for a moment, she leaned closer and stared at the thing behind the glass.
         To describe its appearance as unpleasant would miss a perfect opportunity to use the word ‘grotesque’. It was roughly ovoid, about the size of a clenched fist and covered in leathery-looking, wrinkled skin the colour of bile. What seemed to be the base finished in a puckered knot like a set of swollen lips, but what was drawing Sam’s attention was the other end. Mainly the teeth. The main body – if it could be called that – ended abruptly there in a gaping maw, edged with rings of tiny, vicious fangs. Surrounding the mouth, floating loosely in the liquid, was a set of thin tendrils, frayed and tattered but still with small, serrated hooks visible along the frond lengths. Some had ribbons of pale flesh attached to them, as if they had been pulled roughly out of something else.
         “Don’t look too closely at that.”
         Richard’s voice wrenched her back out of her observations and Sam jumped, glancing round at where he was searching through a draw.
         “Is it alive?”
         He gave a short laugh as he started on another draw, and shook his head slightly.
         “You don’t know much about formaldehyde, do you? No, it’s not alive.”
         “What is it?” Sam turned back to the thing again, squinting at it. If she had to guess, she’d think it was some of mutated squid, but…
         “It’s a temporary uterus.”
         Sam shot away from the jar so fast she might have been on wheels.
         “It’s a what?” she hit the edge of the desk Richard was searching through, sending a stack of paper sliding into its neighbour. He glanced up, looking annoyed.
         “A temporary uterus. That one’s about three years old, one of the first operations Else ever had to do- Ah!” he nodded with satisfaction as he pulled a blue folder out of the pile. “Here we are. I must talk to Darek about filing charms.”
         “But…but…but how? How can it…?”
         “Filing charms? They just need a- ”
         “That isn’t what I meant!” Sam cut him off, and was promptly impaled on a dark Glare. Then Richard’s expression softened and he caught her shoulder, gently pushing her in front of him as they moved towards the exit.
         “Believe me, kid,” he said quietly as the door swung closed behind them, “you don’t even want to know.”