The tissue revealed all secrets, all thoughts, even those that the mind had long forgotten. The victims could preserve no part of themselves in death. Gábor lived a thousand lives and died a thousand deaths in the wine cellar.

Even the most seemingly mundane and trivial of lives became magnificently unique as the creature consumed them, and though all lives were special in their own way, there were outstanding gems among them. The creature had selected these, like a fine winemaker, with great care. There was the poet who, whenever writing a poem, caused a rain that wouldn’t stop until the poem had been destroyed. His life was intertwined in a special way with nature. His senses were different too, he lived in the constant bliss of synesthesia; sight was touch to him, touch was sound, pain was a melody. There was the girl who was raised by a group of owls in the forest. The girl came to resemble an owl herself, both in appearance and behavior. Or the boy who was also six other boys around the world at the same time, sharing one single consciousness. As the creature ate the child, all the rest perished as well; in this way he ate them all. That was quite a feast.

The last lives appeared with clarity in the creature’s mind as well, not just Gábor’s. A boring philosopher, arrogant, always on his high horse. Then his girlfriend, a law student. Then the girlfriend’s childhood friend. Then her twin sister. At last, he approached a woman in a bar: willful eyebrows, pitch-black hair. They went to a hotel room, and the monster took the woman’s place.

The woman was Mr. Kővári’s wife.

They fucked the night before coming to the cellar. Mr. Kővári didn’t notice the difference, he had no idea that his life’s worth was being measured, and he was seconds away from being consumed by the terror that had become his wife. During intercourse the creature kept wondering the whole time whether the winemaker was worth devouring. The creature ate his semen to get a taste.

The man was painfully boring, a pretentious asshole, and the creature didn’t desire that life at all. Not even the collection of tastes stored on the man’s tongue was worth the effort.

The complex ended with the woman sitting in the car, watching Mr. Kővári leaning on the hood of his Porsche, watching the chalk-white mountain.

A car was approaching. Gábor realized that he was seeing himself arriving on the scene, through the eyes of an aeons-old creature.

That’s where the complex ended.