Everything changed, when Jigsaw arrived. The world went to bed and everything was normal, and when we woke up nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same. Jigsaw didn't care. Jigsaw could not be bargained with, could not be stopped. Jigsaw was relentless. Did not care about colour, sex, race, religion, age. Did not care if you were gay or straight. Was indifferent to your lifestyle choices, what clothes you wore, whether you worked hard or lived on the streets. Jigsaw loved all people, equally.
Nobody knew where it came from. Jigsaw arrived like the weather, overnight, everywhere at once. There was panic in the streets, rioting, looting. Worldwide. Can you imagine? Tens of Thousands died. Governments denied responsibility, and then blamed each other. For a time, the world stood on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. People barely noticed in the panic. Eventually, it was understood Jigsaw was not man made. That was all that they ever understood. They begged people to be calm as they tried to find a cure. How could they, though? Jigsaw was unlike anything the world had ever known.
I remember when I first saw it. I was sitting at a pavement cafe, drinking coffee with my wife. Suddenly, the peace of the day was shattered. A man screaming. I looked up, alarmed, in time to see him running towards me. His scream was unending, it seemed. I couldn't move with fright as he crashed into our table.
I struggled to take in what I was looking at. The man had only one arm. Not that out of the ordinary, granted. But his face.... my God. It still shocks me, thinking back; although I have seen Jigsaw at work a thousand times since then.
His face was missing a large cube of flesh, perfectly straight edged, like a child's building block. He looked like a medical dissection model. I could see the inner workings of his head. There was his brain in cross section, the veins, the nasal cavity. He was not bleeding. It seemed more like a section of his head was simply invisible, and I was looking at what was left. The half of his mouth I could see opened, and his one eye fixed on me. I will never forget the desperate insanity I saw there.
“Help me!” He shrieked. “Please! My arm! My face!” The rest was lost as the horror of it overtook him, and he ran on, still screaming, not waiting to see if I might be able to help.
My wife was white faced with shock. There was stunned silence in the cafe for a moment. Then, I heard a small 'pop', like a champagne cork. It was a comical sound; a weird punch line to the madness we had just seen. I felt a laugh bubbling up, and went to take my wife's hand. It died on my lips as I touched her palm – her fingers were gone, and her wedding ring was lying on the table.
* * * *
“The Missing”. That's what they call those who Jigsaw has taken. It's a safe, easy term for it. Politically correct. It doesn't begin to describe the horror of seeing loved ones dismantled in front of your eyes.
That's how Jigsaw works. Once you have it, bits of you start to disappear. You hear that inconsequential little noise and four of your fingers are gone. Then you hear it again. Maybe a hand or a foot this time. A chunk from your chest, or stomach, or thigh. There is no pain, just another square shaped piece of you missing. It's fast – Jigsaw victims rarely last more than a month, then they are gone completely. Nobody can help. There is no cure. There are only questions. How can you remain alive, when most of you has vanished? Where are you disappearing to? Are you dead, once you're gone? Are you being rebuilt, somewhere else?
Nobody knows. I suspect no one will ever know – until Jigsaw takes them. It doesn’t matter, in the end – the world faced atomic Armageddon, only to discover a different fate had already begun. Jigsaw is the end of everything as we know it. One day, all of us will be Missing. Maybe we were missing something already, some vital part of that which makes us human, and Jigsaw is our judgement. In the end, all we have left are questions; maybe all that’s really missing are answers.
Please God, let me finish this. It’s eating me alive. It just took my other hand. It’s so hard to type with only one finger, and when that goes I’m lost. I don’t think I have much time and I have so much more to