The boy sat cross-legged in the alley, his fingers buried in the wet paper of a ruined newspaper. Rain soaked the collar of his shirt and ran in beads down his spine. He didn’t move. Not when the copper footsteps stopped behind him.
“You’re out late,” the man said.
The boy looked up. The man’s pants were patched at the knees and his shirt hung open over a nest of wiry hair. His breath smelled like meat. Old meat. Salted. The boy flinched when he smiled—teeth the same gray as the sky.
“I live here,” the boy said.
“That so?” The man crouched. He was pale and wet too, but didn’t seem to feel it. “I used to sleep in alleys. Then I found a job. You like work?”
The boy’s throat jumped. He didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head either.
The man reached into his coat. The fabric wrinkled with metal underneath—little clicking sounds, like bones made of spoons. He brought out a tin. Opened it.
The boy leaned back, instinct sharper than thought.
Inside were wires. Rusted, knotted lengths bent into shapes—figures. A woman with no hands. A man with needles down his spine. A dog, its legs made of nails. The boy saw them and thought of pain but didn’t know why.
“I make people,” the man said. “Used to make them out of real things. Then people stopped letting me.”
He took out a wire, coiled in a tight spiral. “This one’s you.”
“I don’t want it,” the boy whispered.
“Oh, you’ll take it.” The man stood, the wire still pinched between blackened fingers. “You’ll take it and come with me. Because if you don’t—well. I get ideas.”
The boy ran.
Not far. The alley curved, ended in a gate welded shut. He pressed his palms to the bars, kicked them, made the kind of noise only kids make when they know something’s truly wrong.
The man walked.
Didn’t hurry.
The boy turned.
“I made a boy once,” the man said. “Used to scream every night, but his tongue came off and then he was quiet. Like this alley. Like the dark.”
He dropped the spiral wire on the concrete. It bounced once. The boy stared at it.
The man opened his coat.
Not to hurt. To show.
Wires. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Stuck in him. Some half-pulled out. Some buried to the hilt. Bent nails. Needles. Hooks. A coil in the place of one nipple. A row of teeth threaded on a filament, looped across his ribs.
“I put them in myself. You can’t imagine the things you learn doing that.”
The boy couldn’t breathe. Not because he was scared. He’d stopped knowing what scared meant.
The man touched the top of the boy’s head. Gentle, like a priest.
“Tell me your name.”
The boy didn’t answer.
The wire man bent down and picked up the coil.
“No matter,” he said. “I’ll name you.”