Have you ever tried to talk without using your jaw? It’s impossible. As I lied on that street of Petrova, bleeding, I could only think of something besides the pain and the almost certain probability I would be dying very soon. How the fuck was I supposed to tell the Politburo anything without a jaw?!
I woke up a few days later in a hospital bed. The room I was in was dark and had no mirrors or windows. I still felt painful as hell. I tried to call a nurse, only to remember I couldn’t, because I had no jaw anymore. And I was too weak to even move, so my only option was to wait. And wait I did.
I don’t know for how long I laid there, alone with my thoughts. But even if I was factually alone, I didn’t feel as such. There was this overwhelming sensation, creeping through my mind, that something was there with me in that cold and dark hospital room.
As I said, I was still very weak. Sometimes awake. Sometimes unconscious. Didn’t know when was when.
I remember when one of the nurses finally entered the room. I was falling asleep, when I heard the creaking door opening and soft steps. “Oh, you’re awake, comrade Taychek!” She said, in clear shock. That wasn’t my name, but maybe she got it wrong.
“Am I?” I asked weakly. Better, I tried to. All she could hear were incompressible noises. I didn’t have a jaw after all.
“Please, don’t try to speak, comrade. This could tear the stitches.”
“Is there anything I can write on?” I asked, before remembering she wouldn’t hear. It’s funny how attached to talking we are. I made some gestures signaling I wanted something I could write on. She brought me a notebook and a pencil.
мне нужно связаться с политбюро (I need to contact the Politburo)
She read what I wrote: “I need to contact the Politburo? I’m sorry, comrade.” She laughed. “How could I even do that?” I took the notebook back and wrote:
я КГБ (I’m KGB)
“Well, Comrade Taychek…” She sighed. “I think the accident harmed your mental faculties.”
несчастный случай? (Accident?)
“Comrade, you are not an KGB agent!” She giggled. “You’re a mining worker! You suffered a terrible accident last week. Barely survived.”
I immediately knew what was going on. Probably the KGB deemed me too dangerous. Maybe they thought I knew too much? Or could see them as responsible for my horrible injuries and consider defecting? The USSR was already in a bad shape at the time, a lot of people were fleeing. Well, the KGB methods are incredibly effective. But they won’t work with someone who routinely implemented them.
However, that nurse clearly wasn’t involved. They had probably crafted a whole new backstory for me, convinced everyone about it, and hope I would be successfully gaslighted. That’s one of the tactics we used. But even if I kept knowing the truth, this would make things extremely difficult. No one would listen to a jawless man claiming to be from the KGB and that he has information on an eldritch abomination under the ocean.
But if the things that accursed monster told me were true, it was a matter of time before the doom that came to Petrova happened again. Not that I would know if it happened. These things were always censored. I had really two options. Either I went after my boss and got arrested for impersonating a KGB officer or I waited until they came to me desperate on how to deal with the Maw.
After a month in the hospital they allowed me to go. The KGB had provided me with a small house in a small town with the outskirts of Vladivostok, new documentation and a job at the mine I got “injured” at. The first thing people asked when I went to work was “Who is the new guy with no jaw?” so yeah, even if I was successfully gaslighted, the fact that nobody knew me in the mine would instantly reveal the truth.
Then suddenly, five weeks after I woke up in the hospital, I woke up to find out my jaw was somehow back! Oh, how good it was to have it back. Do you know how horrible it is to only be able to drink and eat using a funnel, water and soup?
But even if my jaw was back, it seemed wrong. I mean it worked perfectly, but… It looked like it was somehow grossly stitched… No, not sewn, amalgamated carelessly. It was all crooked, had several scars, and looked… Rotten? Somehow it looked dead. I could feel and move it, but it felt dead.
Two days after my jaw was unexplainably back, my mouth started talking to me on it’s own. I know it seems absurd, but it literally started moving and saying cryptic things, in this deep and inhuman old voice. Things like: “What to do when happiness fades into boredom?”, “What to do when sadness turns into apathy?”, “What to do when fear becomes ordinary?”, “What to do when anger becomes neutrality?”
At first it talked only once per day, but then it started talking more and more. Soon barely an hour went by without me hearing it saying cryptic words.
Eventually, as I knew they would, the KGB stopped by and ordered me to come with them. I was taken to the office I used to work in Vladivostok. My boss, comrade Chebrikov, was waiting in my old room, along with another officer, comrade Saburova. I assumed that she had taken the position I “left” vacant.
“Comrade Lebdjev.” Chebrikov sighed. He clearly was very uncomfortable with the whole situation. “Do you remember me?”
“Da! Do you really think this whole circus could work with me?”
“The ministers said it would probably be safer this way.” Comrade Saburova said, when she saw Chebrikov was too ashamed to talk. She continued: “You had been through a lot. Being under such trauma can corrupt someone’s mind. And a man as skilled as you are could be specially dangerous in the hands of the enemies of the Proletariat.” After she said that, there was an extended period of tense silence.
“Well, comrade Lebdjev… I see you got yourself a new jaw…” My boss said.
“Well, not even I know how it happened. I simply woke up with a new jaw some days ago.”
“We… Look, Pyotr… We need your help.” He finally said.
“Oh I surely also needed your help when you left me to die in Petrova! Or when the state was literally brainwashing me!”
“We did what we had to do, comrade Lebdjev.” Saburova said.
“Oh, come on, Pyotr. You know this is standard protocol.”
“You doubted my loyalty!” I screamed.
“We… I’m sorry. What I did wasn’t right. And you don’t need to forgive me. This… It’s not about me. I’m not here merely to apologize or catch up with you and… Your weird new mouth.”
“The Maw. It’s attacks are continuing relentlessly. Six villages massacred, two towns razed. Five harbors destroyed, two military bases slaughtered. More than five thousand dead and the bodies keep piling up. We have had to evacuate more than thirty thousand east. And the attacks are coming dangerously close to Korea. This could spark an international incident.” Comrade Saburova said.
“Every time they attack, they take all the bodies they cause with them to the sea. That thing is amassing a massive army. An army made with out own soldiers.” Chebrikov said.
“We have tried everything, bullets of all calibers. Missiles. Fire. Blades. Radiation. Nothing works. They won’t even talk to us. They just attack.” Saburova continued.
“What makes you think I would be able to talk to them?” I asked.
“I may have overestimated your intelligence, comrade Lebdjev.” He pointed to my mouth.
“We know it talks. And we have reason to believe it listens.” Saburova said.
“Da… Of course you bugged my house.”
“Nyet, we bugged you. There are three listening devices installed inside you.” Saburova declared.
“How lovely.”
“How do you make it talk?” Chebrikov asked.
“I don’t. It talks on it’s own. Very annoying, I must say.”
“Jaw? Are you listening to us?” Saburova asked.
“I have one idea.” Chebrikov raised his handgun and pointed at my forehead. “Either you talk, or I’ll be killing your host body.”
“What the hell are you doing, comrade?” Saburova asked, faking that she was surprised. I was not scared at all, I doubted he would kill me. That was standard KGB interrogation procedures. They had probably even rehearsed it. But to my surprise, it actually worked.
“What happens when a surprise happens so many times it stops surprising you?” The jaw suddenly asked with it’s weird deep voice.
“It starts bothering you.” Saburova answered.
“First it becomes typical. Then it becomes a bother. And last it becomes boring.” The jaw said.
“But what does this has to do with anything?” Chebrikov asked.
“I may have overestimated your intelligence, human.” The jaw sneered.
“Chebrikov, I think it may be trying to tell us something…” Saburova said.
“It’s a waste of time! It’s mocking us!” He shouted, angrily.
“We have already stated our demand to the host.” The jaw declared.
“What does it want, Pyotr?” Chebrikov asked.
“It wants to be nuked.” I answered.
“What?” Both of them said.
“You have heard what it said in the past. You have heard what it said now. All emotions cause boredom to the mouth. It has lived for two billion years.”
“It wants to die?” Saburova asked.
“No. It just wants to feel.” I answered.
“Oh… I will talk with the Politburo.” Chebrikov said.
Two weeks later, I was returned my old identity and given an official apology and compensation by the higher-ups, in the form of a beautiful apartment in one of the nicest neighborhoods of Moscow and a even prettier pension.
Three weeks later, I was invited to watch the explosion by Chebrikov. I spent several hours on an airplane until we landed on a Kiev Class aircraft carrier. The sun was rising. Chebrikov and Saburova were there. They handed me a pair of sunglasses and binoculars. Not long after, we saw the airplane carrying the bomb taking off. It approached the place where the ruins of that old oil station stood. The plane opened it’s compartment, and something fell out of it. We avoided looking straight at it on impact, but then we went back to looking at it. A massive mushroom rose above the the Pacific. And for the first time since I was interrogated by my former boss and Saburova, my jaw spoke: “So delicious!”