This is a good one! I really like your writing; it's one of the few styles that can still just suck me in and have me sitting there reading pages and pages without stopping. And I love the kinds of unexpected ideas you explore in a lot of your works. Especially with the way this one started, where it seemed at first to be heavy-handed metaphor and then turned out to be completely literal. Brilliant, that.

I really liked this bit, too: Alchemical concoction of memory and prejudice and ambition and the stupid kid-dreams nobody really let go of, not really, no matter how far and how hidden and rotted they were left in the backs of dreary, tired skulls. Glorious, unstable, alchemical Rebis. The stink of personhood–sentience.

It smelled like rotted strawberries and paint.

Like, that's so cool? The way you take this entirely intangible idea which is tangible to the character and then tie it down to a concept that the average real-world reader can pin down.

You did occasionally use themselves when I think you meant to use themself, but other than that I didn't see much wrong with it. I really like the way your writing reads like a modernist short story from the sort of person who wants you to think about inexplicable Jesus statues or something but without the drudging aversion to fun. Wish I could write like that.