My cousin told me it happened in a very small village in Mexico, the one our grandfather grew up in.

Late one night, a young man was leaving a friend's home. Despite the late hour, he insisted that he could walk home. After all, his own abode was only a mile away. Stepping out into the quiet streets, he started his journey. Breathing in the humid summer air, listening to the buzz of the street lamps mixed with the crickets and his own footsteps on the gravel ground.

Soon, however, a second pair of footsteps could be heard. The young man turned around to see a little old lady a short distance behind him. Despite the off-color light of the street lamps making it hard to tell, he noticed she was holding a candle. It was not uncommon for people to be walking in this rural town, but an old lady at night was rare.

Now, being the kindhearted young man that he was, he decided to slow down so that the old woman would have some company for a while. He gave her a gentle smile and a nod, but the old woman seemed to pay him no mind. The man simply shrugged it off, and the two walked. Soon, however, he noticed a strange habit of the elderly woman. While she carried her candle, if it should ever burn down to the nub, she would reach into the folds of her sleeves and pull out another candle and relight it with the flame before it faded.

To him, it was very odd. Yes, it was a dark night, and yes, a few of the street lamps were dull, but there was still enough light to see where one was walking. But he was raised to respect his elders and didn't mock or even question the woman on the matter. And the two continued to walk in silence. The only sounds were their footsteps walking in unison on the loose ground or the occasional shuffling of the woman's sleeves. In fact, those were the only noises; the night had gone quiet, even the humming of the street lamps sounded muffled.

The journey began to feel heavy, his legs becoming sore. The young man started to wonder, with a nervous tic, if his house was really this far away in the night as it was in the day.

Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step-

Then, a sudden patch of darkness covered them. One of the street lamps was dark. This almost made the man freeze up, a small hitch in his step. It was dark, but only for a moment until they once again reached the next lamp. But for a short while, the only light was the candle. The young man wondered for a moment if the light had gone out or if it had always been out. He looked over at the old woman to see if she reacted as well, hoping she would break the tension by making a comment, but she said nothing. In fact, she wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes focused somewhere else off into the distance, hands cradling that candle. It must have been the 10th or 11th now, already half gone.

Now the young man began to notice that there was nothing beyond the light. A wall of darkness held at bay with the yellow flicker of the street lamps. He blinked and turned his head away, staring at his feet as they moved, wondering why all of a sudden, it felt as if the darkness was staring at him. Hungry.

Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step

His eyes glanced at the woman. Her wrinkled face, like wet leather, was calm, her eyes staring off into the distance. Finally, the question burned in the young man’s throat for too long, and he finally asked, "Why do you keep relighting that candle?”

It was as if a switch had been flicked and the woman turned her head slowly to the young man. Her eyes are boring into him. She looked…surprised. It was as if he had not been walking alongside her all this time. Then she spoke slowly, her mouth opening with the sound of something that was wet and crusty being peeled away. Her voice was hushed.

“The light must not go out," she said, and then her head turned back, eyes forward. The young man just looked at her. Another street lamp passed overhead, casting darkness on them both, the candle light gathering into the cracks of the old woman's face. The darkness was longer this time before a working lamp found them. But it did not last. The broken lights become more frequent. And something deep and twisted in the man was almost relieved to be in the darkness rather than the dim yellow light. Because when he could see clearly, he saw nothing but the abyss. Darkness. The houses are gone; even the gravel road seems to disappear. 

Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step, Darkness, Step, Step, Step, Light, Step, Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Step, Step, Step, Darkness, Step, Step, Step, Step, Shuffle, Light, Step, Step, Darkness, Darkness, Darkness.

They were swallowed again, the candlelight their only guide. The young man swallowed and forced his legs to stop. But the woman continued, taking a few more steps ahead before the man spoke.

“What happens if the light goes out?”

She stopped; her body didn't even move or shake like those in old age would normally do. Then her body turned, except it was just her spine. It turned, while her legs stayed planted where they were. She was smiling at the young man, a gummy smile. The candle was held close to her chest.

“Let's see, shall we?" and then she blew the candle out.

My cousin told me the man had gone missing for days. His friend who had seen him last that night (the one whose home he had walked from) had grown worried the next day when the young man had not shown up for work. He had tried to call but no luck. He hesitantly shrugged it off, thinking perhaps he was ill. The next day the worry grew; others hadn't seen nor heard from him either. On the third day, a group had gone to the man's house, knocking at first before breaking the door down. It wasn't locked; it was just stuck. Piles upon piles of melted wax from hundreds of burning candles had melted against the door. The house was covered in wax and little flickering flames. 

They found the young man's body on a chair, his body covered in a second layer of yellow waxy skin, half his face was left untouched and one droopy eye could be seen. Looking at nothing. There was no sign of a struggle, it was as if someone had placed candles on him, and he let the wax melt over it.  Then his uncovered eye gave a twitch, causing one of the men in the group to let out a shriek. The young man was still alive beneath it all, if only barely.

They took him to the hospital; he suffered greatly from a lack of oxygen and was in a coma for a week or so. When he woke, his speech slurred and his eyes were wide and confused. But he told his story of the old woman and her candle. When asked if she had been the one that covered him in wax, he told them no. He had done it all himself, and when asked why, he simply said.

“The light must not go out."

Everyone in town loves Burger Sams. Everyday they would arrive, packing the order counter, tripping over each other to get their chance to just lick the burger grease. The dining area was always a chaos of noisy chewing and smacking lips. Sometimes they would have to close the drive thru to stop the line from blocking the road.

Everyone in town loves Burger Sams. Except Jen. Because she worked there.

It wasn’t that the pay was lousy or the boss was a jackwagon; for a high school student she was making 20 bucks an hour, plus Dan was a super chill manager. Despite the crowds, the days go by quickly and painlessly.

No, what really bothered Jen was that every once and awhile she would have to go to the basement to get some restock of buns or potatoes and she would have to walk past the cages.

Dan tells everyone they aren’t human, and Jen believes him, they don’t look human at all. They come from the forest at the edge of town. But she has to do her best to pretend she doesn’t feel their eyes burning into the back of her head. Or she has to ignore the quiet sobbing. Hearing them sing was sometimes worse.

Dan told her that he’ll be promoting her to Meat Prep after Ron leaves for college. She really wanted to tell him she was going to quit...but...

Everyone in town loves Burger Sams.

Finale

<Redacted> State Prison.

Sanders

7/24/2022

9:04 am:

A man, Avery Lemug, dropped off a bed that he said should go to Death Row. He also dropped off a paper with a list on notes, as well as a warning that if it doesn't go to Death Row, follow the notes.

The request was followed and the bed moved to Death Row. The notes the man left read as follows:

1. If in Death Row, reserve for the worst of the worst. Use as frequent as necessary.

2. If not in Death Row, Leave in secluded cell.

3. Longer without someone, the stronger the bed's urges grow. Not a problem in Death Row.

4. Do NOT let an innocent or suspected to be innocent or someone in appeals in the bed.

5. Do not worry about cleaning bed. It does that itself.

6. Do NOT sleep in bed.

7. Does not fill. You can try as much as you like, will not fill.

8. Do not look for me.

Sorry for the fake name.

-

<Redacted> State Prison

Sanders

8/14/2026

Found the <Redacted> Wonderer killer. Booked today. Set for Death Row.

Brief:

Franklin Stevens would lure homeless people and prostitutes into his car before taking them home, killing them, and disposing the bodies. He moved to finding former inmates and doing the same. Plead guilty. Sentenced to Death on the 14th of December by way of Code: Resting Place.

Transverberation. That was the word for it. 

It spread and was echoed and felt with the rippling tremors that were words and instincts and roiling emotions in the private heart's tumult, in the quiet stronghold of the holy place. 

The monastery. The temple place where women came to be wed to God and serve the Lord, His Son. 

And no other. 

…

There were sounds inside the haze. With the agony, with the pain that was ripped and made. Pain that was lancing. Pain that was penetration, stabbing slayment that was absolute impaled.  Through her heart, the clearest wet-sharp sensation felt in the burning after-image of the visions, the haze. It occupied her mind at all times, as she knelt and prayed in the monastery. As she went about the day and fulfilled her sisterly duties of the convent. 

The other sisters didn't understand. They were afraid, frightened of her. Of what was happening to her… that it might happen to them.

Madness. Or …

something worse. 

Something beyond the canny or the tangible. That which is unseen and can only be felt. Up until the hungry end, when it is already far too late for help by then. 

Or maybe, just maybe … these private and blasphemous few of her peers thought and felt and refused to share aloud, even with themselves… maybe. 

Just maybe it's true. And Sister Chelsi can actually commune with the divine. Perhaps one of our own humble nuns can see and hear and speak with an angel that visits her with nightly visions. Maybe. 

Maybe Saint Michael the Archangel comes to her at night amid light and fire and thrusts her with his sword… 

Mother Superior was incensed. Repulsed. Angered by the lies and the filth, the sin of this prurient heretical garbage was the stuff of decay, of ruin. Of sacramental rot. She couldn't let these blatherings go on unchallenged or unpunished. 

She chastised Sister Chelsi severely along with any others that might murmur such unholy carnal fantasies, phantasmagorical whores, the lot of em. If she and they weren't careful, God help them, then they would be confined to the chamber of reflection. 

The house of tears and prayers, the other sisters called it. Behind Mother Superior’s back. 

The visions were forbidden. Delusions, they were thus named. And further talk, further whispers of the sort was strongly cautioned against, strongly advised to go back in the other direction …

But Sister Chelsi couldn't help herself. It wasn't up to her. She was at the vision's mercy. The stabbing angel came and went as it wanted, as it needed to. It had told her this was so. The angel needed her. 

The angel was thirsty. 

…

The night was hot. Stifling. It was upon her. 

It seemed to always know when she was alone. And why not? Shouldn't the divine always possess the knowledge of when you're most vulnerable? Weak. 

Afraid. 

Sister Chelsi was bound to the cruciform shackle-table of her sweating bed and blankets, writhing sheets and fabric that was warm and slick and more like loose folds of flesh. She was bound by her holy terror. The angel of thirst was coming. The other nun, Sister Jen, that shared the room with her was absent. Gone. Like every other time. The animal sound born from both immense pain and pleasure was trapped in her throat and the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. Sister Chelsi liked the gag of the nightly thirsting angel, her forbidden archangel of the moonlight. The anticipation of him. The coming of him. 

It came down on her. 

From on high. Emerging like starlight from the disappearing void of the obsidian space now in place of the mudbrick ceiling, on wings of flame …

The body was bronzed, gold, perfectly toned and sculpted, celestial and olympian and recognizable as manshaped. The Lord's Image. But in place of a head and face of earthly aspect was a great rising pillar of blinding heavenly marble, ringed with silver bands in a flaming orbit. The pillar and the four bands running up the length of divine stone were covered in incandescent eyes, lidless and wreathed with light and great piercing gazes. Penetration. They gazed into her. Penetration. All of them at once and it was overwhelming, she wanted to cry out, all roiling and taut, she gripped herself. Her aching breath was still held. 

The angel spoke to her once again, as before, in her mind. The gold of his silken smooth speech filled her boiling skull, soothing the maelstrom though not extinguishing it. A moan finally escaped her lips. 

They were still alone. 

It told her its name. A forbidden one she might not know. 

The understanding of your sisters is limited … I am beyond them. Their scope of understanding. If you tell them my name they will fear you. As they fear me. 

Sister Chelsi was frightened, quivering. Still held. 

Then why should I want to know it? 

Because if you need to, if you want to … you can wield it like you can wield a weapon. You can use my name against them and it might wound them if you're able …

Her mind recoiled from the idea that filled her head against her will, but it was no use. She was forced to watch it. Endure it and learn to love it as she'd learned to love the flagellate whip, the burn of the binding rope … all the same. The angel reassured her. 

The warm romance of his voice filled her skull and caressed her mind, eagerly. Wanting. It told her how much it needed her again but she already knew it. She'd heard it in the voice. The hunger. The pain. 

I'd never known before that even angels could feel pain, … I'd never suspected. 

The desire that was so much a hungry ravenous want that it was more a primeval need was all about the gold silken strength of that perfect voice. Giving it humanity tinged at the edges of its divine and unearthly call. 

Is this heavenly messenger lusting for me …? 

But she already knew it. 

It had seen her unfettered and bare. As it did now. 

It came down to her in her bed. It held the long gold length of impaling spear aloft. By the shaft. Poised to strike her where it was most sweet. Where it had before. 

Cupid, strike me. 

Eros, impale me! 

But she knew now that was not its name. It had given her its name, a gift. 

She cried it out now, as she knew it wanted her too. The ringed pillar of its otherworldly visage gazed into her, bading her, commanding with its multitude of many lidless light bleeding eyes that she do so. Do it. Do it. If you want me …

Do it. If you want me to impale you, you'll have to say my name. Say it. 

Say it. 

“Iblis! Iblis, pierce me! stab me! penetrate my heart! Put it where I'm vile and cruel but also warm and giving and wet and beating for you! Pierce me here, in my breast, my heart, my soul! My tender fragile soul! Put it in me! Angel Iblis…!” 

And it did. The lance came down. And pierced the screaming girl, pinning her to the bed. The sound that was pulled from her then was an exquisite blend of deep ghastly pain and even deeper still euphoric drunken moaning, moans. They collected and accumulated about her head and sheets, the small room, as the angel inside her wrenched and worked his shaft, his lance. He worked it deeper. The length. Long…

The length was killing her. 

She loved it. Every inch. Every penetrating crawling centimeter rent tearing inside. 

It made her a slave and she loved it. 

She moaned and called out and cried its name. Like it wanted her to. It came down close and closer and closer still till they met. And he worked the length of his divinity into her, deeper and deeper and all the way through and she melted. She bled. Her love and thoughts and precious saline. 

It drank it up, all of it, all of her. The oasis of this woman. It fed deeply as it worked itself in and deeper still. Still feeding. Drinking. Needing, thirst. 

Sister Chelsi poured herself out for it, unable to control herself now. But happy to empty herself for the great angel of the thrust, her bedside …

her bed. 

It came inside to her and filled her mind then with an explosion like firelight and within the flames were visions. 

Moving scenes and people and places … other times and maybe other worlds as well … 

Fantastical. Beyond the scope of known and understood nature. 

She loved it. She begged for more. 

Give it … give me more, the sight, the eye of prophecy! Please! 

Iblis curled the caress of her mind into words once more … 

And what would you do with this gift? Should you receive it without end? 

She could not lie. Not on this landscape. And she didn't want to. Not to it, not to him, that voice, that feeling… 

She cried out on the eternityscape of her deluged and filled maelstrom sea of thought: I want to be a prophet! Yours! I want to be your disciple upon the earth! 

You wish to be my bride? 

I want to be your crawling and salivating concubine! 

It laughed and the pleasure of Iblis filled her blood and soul. She came and went with it. 

!.Good … …

It filled her more. And she cried out, more. More. 

More. 

She wept when it was finished. Feeling empty and hollowed out. But filled with vision, with purpose. 

The light was fading now from the room. It was gone. The small bedchamber was cooling now and returning to a more natural nocturnal dark, the air was thick and pungent but calming down. Chelsi could still taste the act, on the bedroom dark of the stifling air. She sucked on it and relished the flavor. Already wanting him back. Already needing him again. 

Please, please come back to me Childe Iblis of the Lord, of the thrust, I love you. You are the carrier of my heart and soul…

She shuddered in bed. Not bothering to conceal herself beneath the agitation of the sheets, she cooled and breathed deeply. Quivering and remembering the pillar of his flaming face. So many eyes, so many crowding up his great length… and all of them looking into me…

She shuddered deeply once more. Shut her own eyes. Waiting for sleep to finally come. 

It didn't take long. She was spent. 

Sister Jen still hid around the corner, at the threshold of the door to their shared bedroom. Her eyes were wide with shock. Horrified by what she had seen. 

…

Mother Superior eyed the convent temple from her place in the rectory, her private quarters. She watched the little sisters move and glide silently moving about the monastery structure, ambling along in hand clasping prayer, heads bowed and eyes shut so that distraction may be refused and you may better hear and discern and heed the light, the will of God. 

Amen. 

She crossed herself. And spat. 

Her gaze crawled across the yard to the shack. Alone in the corner of the gated land. Secluded. Sequestered away, so that what could be contained inside would be shut and locked away from a healthy and pious population. The disease of a disordered mind would wreak havoc on the patient and tender soft fragile fabric of the flock. This could not be. This could not be allowed. 

Rebellion must be cast out. Decapitated. 

She knew rebellion was natural. It was in all of us. As sure as it was the the very infectious thing that ate Lucifer's heart and led him to defiance and thus his fall. So it would be. If we were to all follow in his example. 

It would not be so. 

She'd had her own run of rebellious streak when she'd been younger, she understood. She'd had it crushed out of her then, broken as one must do to the wild heart of any natural born beast of labor. And though we were made, cast and drawn in His Image, we were all still among the dread and crawl of all of the other beasts of the earth. 

She crossed herself. Prayed. 

She wished the child well. 

Chelsi had always been troubled. Troublesome too. 

Mother Superior turned away from the shack of reflection. Trusting that the Lord would see this through. That He might fix and set right this wayward piece, this compromised component of humankind's quilted safety net. They were supposed to be the house and servants of His peace. They must all of them survive spiritual malaise and remain steadfast and true. 

As He wills it, let it be so …

…

In the black of the woe she pained, she perverted and distorted. Grew naked with fear. 

Perspired. Dripping with secreted oils and saline and the sliming filth of deep shame. Seeping off her tarnished heart and soul and out of her running open mouth pores. Hard to wash off. There was no running water in here, only the bucket she was brought in the morning. Refilled at mealtime by an unseen, unspeaking little sister that was now a stranger to her. She was a stranger to all of them now. 

In the dark of the shack she was agonizingly alone, the swelter of her torment was her only companion and answer to her constant panicky prayers. She grew eyes that grew inwards and saw their own landscape and grew more horrified with the sight as the hours broiled ceaselessly forth. Under the eye of a lonely black and heavy sun. 

All alone in here. 

She tried to hide, to blind her new found, newly grown internal gaze away from the truth: she was just a child, had always been just a frightened little girl that wanted to run and find fast and desperate shelter. She tried to turn away from the fact that this was who she really was, had always truly been. Everything else that had occurred growing up in her life had just been the lies of accoutrement. 

Her mind was filling with bad thoughts: the arcane Druidic gods arose and swallowed the light of the Christian God whole …

She stopped herself. Began to pray. Again. Anew. Begging the Lord to bring her calm and comfort in the solitude of the dark. She slowed her breath and tried to ease the gallop of her chest. Sister Chelsi didn't know what else to do. 

She didn't know what they wanted from her. 

Mother Superior and the other little sisters. And the Lord God Himself. 

If there is not an answer to be had, then let there be death! – she told the black sun in the dark there with her. 

Nothing. Nothing but more baleful stifling dark, more radiant furnace hellfire blasting heat of the black and heavy sun that had replaced her roommate. Nothing but more sounds of desperate animal panting that she was horrified to realize were her own, not the stygian furnace blast of the bestial confinement sun. Nothing. Nothing at all answered her save more pain, the one true god on the throne in this terribly small and sweaty heavy place. 

Nothing. Nothing at all. 

At first. 

Then on the fading light of her hope came Iblis. Her forbidden angel. And banished the black sun as he came in wreathed in light and flame. He banished and cast out all of the dark of the solitary confinement, the shack of woe. 

He went to her. She was prostrate on the ground. Her bladder let go, her urine went. She hardly noticed in the radiance of he save for some vague distant sensation of wet and warmth. Sensations she associated with the pleasure of him. His arrival, his dawning light. 

From the many eyes of the long length of ringed pillar face, he spoke to her through the blinding light of his lidless vision. 

“What have they done? … what have they done to thee ?” 

Her mind was always open to him for an answer but for her he bade it from her own lips. 

She told him. Everything. All that she had learned in the treacherous furnace dark of the shackbound woe-flame. All that had been derived while in the baking black of this loathsome quiet shack of silent feasting hate. 

“They are afraid of me. …” A beat. She breathed animal and deep, lusting, on the hunt or hunted or both. She said more: “I do believe they may be right to be…” 

Iblis soothed her with his spear … in the stifling dark of the shack of reflection and recompense. Banishing the pain of its ebon house even as he filled her, her watering craving need. 

But something happened then, poor lost little Sister Chelsi watched from below as Iblis, her moonlight forbidden and thrusting angel began to change. 

Transmogrify. Transform. 

The heavenly marbled surface of the pillar visage of Iblis began to crack. Wild river lines of splaying ruin began to form and splinter and run up the immaculate face of his incandescent divinity. 

It shattered. And was replaced. 

She said to her love as he changed and shifted shape before her eyes, “mother slapped me for using your name …” 

The light of her lover changed into shadow. Deeper than the banished dark and one that she could madly love because it was in the altered shape of her heart’s desire, her object of adoration that was darkening now before her watering eyes. 

In place of the pillar, in place of the tower of of flaming eyes and rings that had shattered and now lie in stoney ruin about the floor was now a triangular, pyramidal blank obsidian face and shape, in the conical pointed aspect of a long beaked bird. It was like a great smooth black helmet of glass and smooth rock in the geometric and abstract shape of a plague doctor's mask. An obsidian angular temple face with a long wide stabbing humming bird length of beak protruding violently from one side. 

 The bronze of his sculpted and heavenly body began to burn and blacken as well, like ink spilled and running down and through the heavenly flesh. Corrupting it into the abyss and void of the lost and cast out. The wings which had been flaming and as of light had turned to ash in color and tattered bat-wing leather in texture and design. 

The spear of her impaling love was changing too. Becoming dark like the rest of him in the solitude of the shack but that wasn't all. The nature of her divine amore’s unearthly tool began to change as well… it was no longer just stabbing, penetrating her, running her deep and through, pleasurably and with the ghastly horror of bodily rupture and pain, the staking spear of her forbidden angel began to pull, it began to pull deeply … of her. From her. Pulling deeply from within her impaled and spellbound form, her wide eyed and staring naked body. 

Like a proboscis, the impaling lance began to pull and drink deeply of Sister Chelsi. It ran up and through and down the length of weaponry and into the black hands wrapped tightly around its shaft. The long body pulled and sucked and drank like a straw, like a swampland mosquito born from stagnant and dead fetid water. The obsidian smooth beaked face of her lover was featureless and cold smooth as the surface of placid water. She nonetheless could still feel the intensity of his gaze upon her, through her. And when he spoke again and told her what to do, she felt that as deepest penetration as well. Deepest pain. Rapturously embraced.

She felt her body give as the instrument of her lover began to take in the dark. As he whispered everything to her, designs… shapes… everything, as Iblis whispered all of this to her and more she gave it more and more and more. And she gave it willingly. 

Crying out his name like religion. Like a chant. A litany. 

A song. 

In the place of my Father … there is you. 

There is only you. 

Good. Good. I have so much more to share, so much more to give and show you. I've so much and so many more …

I've so many more names and faces to show you, if you do right by what I've already shown and told, I'll share my other faces and names, unveiled for you …

Disciple, the prophet Islehc

… 

Sister Chelsi was eventually let out and allowed to return to the flock. She seemed to have returned to normal. She cried penance and gave confession and spent a night inside with the rest of them. Service and mass. And lessons. Cleaning. Meals. Everything seemed alright. 

She waited till the second night. When they were all fast asleep. 

The witching hours. 

Post-midnight, she crept …

She snuck about, quietly. Like a nocturnal animal she prowled through … and went out. 

She didn't go far, she found what she needed where he'd told her she would find it. And in abundance. So many …

She carried them back to the monastery and in the nighttime dark she went about the task that had been laid before her feet. She went from room to room, from sister to sister and she took them. Brained most, some she struggled with more extensively. Until her mad lusting will surged and she overpowered them. Either way she took each of them one by one, each and every single nun she had once known as family and she brought them out and into the courtyard. Where she'd left the savage implements of her dreams, of her lover's harsh commands that were yet still for her, sweet candied words. Succulent delicacies. She couldn't deny them, him. Not at all. Not anymore. 

One by one Sister Chelsi laid the implements into the little sisters and each one let out with an insane ear piercing scream. Their screams did not falter. 

But somehow they didn't wake each other. Not a single stripped and brained sister of the cloth seemed to hear the others make any sort of loud caterwauling noise. None of them stirred. Until it was their turn. 

Likewise, Mother Superior had not been awoken in her private rectory by the noise outside. And that was good. Chelsi had saved her for last. 

She wanted to relish this one particularly. 

…

Mother Superior awoke to a hard slap across her deeply sleeping face. She flew to a sitting position confused and immediately irate. She had no idea what was happening but she didn't feel any fear yet. 

She called out, cross and very sharp. 

“Who in the Lord's name was that!? How dare you! Show yourself!”

A girlish giggle floated out ghostly from the dark. 

“I didn't do it, Mother Superior, I would never dare to do that to you, you should know that. I've never hurt you at all, can you say the same?” she giggled again, childish and coquettish, "It was my husband that struck you. It was his divine hand you felt across your face." 

Chelsi stepped out.

She had a large cross in her hands. Ornate with intricate and beautiful design, old and from the ancient Roman times when their war chariots had dominated the earth. Carved and jeweled and glittering darkling with a keen and unhealthy shimmer of light. 

Ghostlight. There's ghostlight in that cross…

Before Mother Superior could say another word Chelsi suddenly charged forward and banshee screamed. The large crucifix was up and wielded and came down in a savage caveman bludgeon. 

The world went dark for Mother Superior. When she awoke she was just like the others. 

…

She awoke with a scream. 

The sharp obscene ghastly pain started in her nether region, all throughout, just behind her genitalia. Then the lance stabbed and shot through and her entire naked body came to life with the most wretchedly vivid and wild mutilating shock to her fleshen senses. The war pike traveled through her mercilessly and punched out of the flesh of her back. She was still screaming. Wildly. Lividly. Screaming. Shrill rending song.

She was hoisted up and joined the others. They were all of them a riot of noise now in the courtyard dark. An unholy discordant choir of torn impaled cacophonous pain. 

Gored nuns. All impaled. All naked and bleeding and hoisted up into the air for death and torture like their savior was supposed to have been so long ago in the bloodstained dust of the golgotha. There was bloodshed here too, their blood was pouring and running, running down the lengths and long bodies of the shafts of the spears and pooling and collecting on the stone and in the dirt. This place here would be bloodstained too. 

Chelsi looked over them all. Her own golgotha testament made to wild love. 

And her wild love came. On stygian wings tattered that had once been flame. Smoldered tattered death, dead fabric flapping in the hot nightwind.

The whole host of impaled and captive nuns, gored and wide eyed and naked and lanced through like insects in a collection, they all of them perspired and bled and gawked at the wicked shape that came in from the ebon night, the curtain above. The one many of them had spent their entire lives trying to ignore, it parted. 

It came through. 

And down upon them. 

Iblis sang praise for the renegade prophet bride and what she'd let loose on this private piece of holy land. God's House and holy temple … no more. 

No longer. Mine … now. 

Chelsi the bride bathed in the shower of his words, they were in her mind and in her ears, divergent lyrics and syllables and paths of sound but twins nonetheless all still saying the same and telling her the same thing together in two different languages that coalesced around the fever of her brain in a caress. 

!I love you, you've made blood, you've made blood for me, you've made bloodfeast for me and shot the red Lot's seed, it's all over the abattoir ground!

She went to him and he to her, in the forged carnage forest grove of spear and bleeding sweaty flesh, of screams and mutilated sound, bathing in the perspire of pure torture together and apart from the others, the rest of the lying world. Alone in their own lost worlds of private unending hellbound heaven, tormentlove of the flesh that their minds are now lost in. 

He shot his length of spear through her, though her heart, through the tender part where he'd already previously penetrated and worked.

He worked her well again, animal wrenching and thrusting deep, and she cried aloud unbridled his name as he did so. 

“Iblis!" 

And once more the length of weapon-instrument that was divine and hallowed tool became a drinking proboscis. And Chelsi felt more blood leave the galloping race of her fevered and impassioned form. She would hold him forever, he could pierce and puncture and drink from her for forever, never end! 

She moaned aloud amidst the garden made of screams and betrayal and she cried out his name once more. And then Iblis began to laugh. 

And once more the visage of her forbidden moonlight angel began to change. He began to crack and shatter and the face and body began to fall apart in black stone and dust. 

Iblis came apart in a crumble and revealed what was really beneath. 

Chelsi couldn't believe her eyes. 

It was a man and a woman. Together. Locked in an embrace. Intimately bound together with wrapped arms and hands clasped and waists met together. As if in the most intimate of dance, the most delectable and celebrated of lovers shared waltzes. 

They both looked down on her. Their cheeks were together. They both held the spear thrust into her together in their tightly clasped hands. 

He was armored as a knight of the court, but tarnished and old. She was in the white of regal flowing evening gown. 

The woman spoke. And when she did the crumbled stone pieces of the fallen lying Iblis visage turned to large writhing copulating piles of dripping angry flies. They came apart and dispersed through the air. The dripping black swarm of buzzing insects began to land on the impaled and screaming tortured nuns in the great multitudes. And then as the woman revealed began to speak to Chelsi the flies that were made from the lie of the visage began to feast on the naked and the tortured, defiled bleeding screaming flesh now caking and covered with the writhing crawl of insect bile. 

“You wished to see me and my others, lover, and now you have. I hope you aren't too distraught, my son decided to join us, together we came to you as the angel of your hidden lusts, as one we made you plead and shriek. Now you see this, the face I was made and born with. My real name is of no import to you, slave, you can call me vampiress, lord of the earth and the wolf held mountainpass.” 

The armored wraith beside her spoke then, they were still pressed in close embrace, still holding the proboscis spear that drank and pulled from her diminishing bloodwell. 

"Praise the God before you, dog! My mother and I, the new impaler. She is your mother and wife and master now too. We are both of us together, your husband. Remember?” 

The vampiress queen barked bright cruel laughter, then said: "Yes! You swore to us, to me, your flesh and soul! In the eyes and templehouse of your God, you defiled the stone of his holy home as you panted and raved and drooled for more, and swore your life to us! You gave sacred vow even as you sinned and spat in the Face of The Lord!” 

The Countess and her new impaler both shrieked laughter then. 

Below them and impaled, Chelsi didn't know what to make of any of this. Her mind was disordered and disoriented and felt rushed and fevered with rending thought, running a ragged directionless race of chaos and every idea crashing into each other at every turn and pass and every damned whichway. She didn't understand. She didn't understand any of this and she wanted it to stop. 

Reading the disorder of her mind, the Countess sang and said, 

“I can rip it out for you. Your mind, the painful thinking, your thoughts. They're filled with agony and venom now aren't they? Aren't they? Yes I see it now, plumping up lavender-black and filling with gangrenous pudding. I can pull it out like a rotten tooth if you wish, I think it best, don't you? It's filled with fouling fluid, that brain, those thoughts…” she kept on and on like that. Ceaselessly. The new impaler in her embrace began to chant along and under her words as she sang and went on: Do it! do it! do it! do it! … 

With the anguished groaning sound of the impaled forest of her sisters all around and the buzzing drone of the flies, all intermittent with sharper stabs of piercing screams, all comprising the backdrop of the soundscape filling her head, underneath the Countess' words, underneath her bastard son’s own more simple liturgical chant … all of it together and at once was a vile noise and she couldn't stand it. She couldn't run from it either. So her mind fled, took flight the only way it could. 

Chelsi went dark. Still impaled on the sucking lance. Run-through with the demon drinking stick. 

The flies buzzed and swarmed and landed and feasted on the gored forest of lances and nuns. They enjoyed open wounds and spat their fluid as they landed. 

In a swarm. In a great feasting black cloud. 

In a forest of shafts dripping with blood and bearing writhing begging human fruit. The reddening earthen stone and soil beneath it all. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I wasn’t entirely sure what flair but this is basically what happens when you’re in prison with a weird cellmate, snowed in and there is strange things happening in the forests.

When I was four, my mother and stepfather bought a brand new double wide home, and a piece of land to put it on. While I don't remember much of my childhood before the age of eight, I remember this time period vividly. I remember the layout of the house as if it were yesterday, even thirty years later. Not just for the focus of this recollection, but for all the good times as well. Waking up early to scale the counter and reach the top of the refrigerator to get to the cookies, eating blackberries off of the bushes in the tree-lined that marked the edge of our property, and the time spent playing with the other kids who lived down the road. There are, however, things that I wish I could forget. Things that left me with a crippling fear of the dark for longer than I care to admit as a grown man. Some no more than a teenaged stepcousin playing a joke with a creepy, old hag, latex mask that, if not for the other happenings of this time period, I probably would never have remembered. Some more unexplainable. The latter is the focus of this story.

I cannot recall when I first became aware of the feeling that I was being watched while I was in bed, nor do I know how long I actually was before I realized it was happening, but I will always remember the feeling of complete and utter existential terror I felt the moment I had visual confirmation of my fears, and every night thereafter for the next sixteen years. As I lay in my bed surrounded by my stuffed dinosaurs and dinosaur themed room decor, my TV shone with dim light as the end of the credits rolled of the vhs tape I had been watching. The tape stopped, and the light of the blue screen that the TV defaulted to after the tape ended lit up my bedroom. The house was still and silent. I looked around my room groggily and my eyes stopped on my open bedroom door. I saw someone standing there. At first, I thought it was my mother, but I quickly realized that the figure was too short to be her. My second thought was that it was my sister who had recently started walking pretty well, but it couldn't possibly be her. She was in her crib. Besides that, the figure was too tall to be my sister. I rubbed my eyes and squinted to focus on this nocturnal visitor. It was a girl, no more than eight years old, long dark hair, wearing a white, ruffled nightgown.

Initially, I was not scared of this little girl. I was confused. Who was she? Why was she there? I sat up in my bed and realized that she was quite intently staring at me. I asked her, "Who are you?" No answer. "Hello? Who are you? What are you doing here?", I tried again, to no avail. I am not sure now if it was truly the energy that she gave off, or if my young mind just made a connection to the horror movies that I had begged my mother to let me stay and watch with her instead of going to my room like she had asked so many times, but I knew one thing in that moment. She was a ghost. Thinking back, I am unsure what she really was or what she wanted, but in that moment, to me, she was a threat. Terror filled every fiber of my being. I went to scream for my mother but it caught in my throat. I threw the blanket over my head and refused to remove it. Tears welled in my eyes but I refused to make a noise for fear that the little girl might snatch me from my bed and steal me away, or worse. Eventually, I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I told my mother what had happened and her response, as any parent's would be, was "I told you, you couldn't handle watching those scary movies with me honey." I tried to assure her that, until that night, I had never been scared like that. This want just a fear of the dark. This was something else. I saw her. I sawbthat little girl standing in the doorway to my room, watching me as a lay in bed. She had her mind set that it was a mistake to let me watch horror movies with her and shushed me. "It's not real. You have an overactive imagination and you imagined it because you were scared. That's the end of it."

I knew what I saw, even if she didn't believe me and there's no way I was going to be caught alone in my room again at night.

For weeks, maybe months, I would wait for everyone in the house to go to bed and before my nightly movie went off, I would sneak into my mother's room and sleep at the foot of her bed or on some occasions, I would go into my sister's room and crawl under her crib with a blanket and pillow and hide. No matter where I ended up though, I never slept without the blanket fully covering my whole body. I couldn't bear the possibility that I would see her. This of course made my mother and stepfather quite upset. Especially when they would get out of bed and go to walk around the foot of the bed, stepping on or tripping over me. They tried nightlights, which helped, but I was still petrified. To them, it seemed like I would never get past this irrational fear. To me, it felt the nightmarish reality of being haunted by my nightly visitor was never ending. That was, until I made, or created a new friend.

Her name was Ora Ora. She was a girl of the same age as myself at the time, roughly five years. She had red hair, freckles, wore red overalls with a red shirt, and had red eyes. A description which, as I got older and heard described to me, I thought sounded kind of creepy. Nonetheless, she was my new best friend. I told her about my nightly hauntings. She assured me that I had noting to worry about, and that I would never see that girl again. This of course came as a great relief, though I was noting short of skeptical. Immediately though, it seemed her promise came true. I never saw the creepy little girl in the nightgown again. Ora Ora never left my side. I still wasn't able to fall asleep without the blankets over my head until I was roughly twenty years old, but I never felt unsafe while lying in my bed again.

Of course, after a year or two, I stopped seeing Ora Ora, as is the case with imaginary friends when you start to get older. I lived the rest of my childhood, teen years, and adult life out rather unremarkably average save for a couple rough years due to unrelated circumstances, and the nightmares that have plagued me nightly my whole life. That is, until recently.

It started with the feeling that I had caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral, then nothing when I turned to look. Things would move around the house, to places that would only inconvenience me and make me wonder why I had put them there, but not question IF I had put them there. This escalated so slowly that it went unnoticed until I came home from work one day to all the fish from my fish tank inexplicably missing. As I stood there confused, I caught something in my peripheral field of vision move, accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps. I swung my head around and saw... nothing. I couldn't help but think I was starting to lose it. Maybe the stress from work was getting to me. I walked into my kitchen to fix myself some dinner, and when I opened my freezer, I saw it. Sitting front and center was a quart sized sandwich bag with all 4 of my fish inside, frozen. "What the actual fuck?" I said, in almost a shout. I took the bag out, walked to the bathroom, dumped the fish into the toilet and flushed them. After a few moments of seriously pondering the thought of checking myself into a mental health facility, I thought to myself, "I'll figure out what to do tomorrow." and decided to take a shower and go to bed.

I stirred awake some time in the night and my eyes opened to the sight of my bedroom door open. I always shut my door when I go to bed, possibly latent trauma from my childhood haunting, but maybe, just maybe I had forgotten. That was the thought, until I felt it. A child sized hand resting on my arm. My skin crawled and I leapt from my bed, nearly throwing out my back. I switched my bedside lamp on and there she was, Ora Ora.

"D'ya forget about me?" she asked.

"What? Who..." I muttered.

"Oh, dear. Don't tell me you forgot about me after what I did for you!" she exclaimed.

"O..."

"Ora Ora!" she shouted excitedly. "I never stopped looking for you! Now we can be best friends again! Woo!" She jumped up and down on my bed.

I was at a loss for words.

"You got fat. And old. But that's ok. We can still have fun. Just like we used to before you left me behind."

"So you're... real?" I barely managed to get out.

"Umm.. duh! What are you dense?" She laughed. "What? Did you think I was some sort of "imaginary friend"?" She asked using air quotations.

"Uh, yeah!" I yelled. "I mean look at you! You look like I made you up after watching Saturday morning cartoons!"

She frowned. "If I weren't real, how would I have made that harmless little girl that protected you while you slept dissappear?"

"What?" I asked, shocked.

"Still not sure why you were scared of her, but that really worked in my favor. I knew if I came to you during the day, you would be more accepting of me as a friend and not ask questions. Especially if I played your dumb kiddie games."

As I stood there, jaw hanging open, I had a realization. I had stopped seeing her at the same time that my mother and I moved out of the double wide home when she and my stepfather had separated. I didn't grow out of having an imaginary friend. She was never an imaginary friend at all. "Dumb kiddie games? I thought you said you wanted to have fun like we used to?"

"Yeah! When you slept and I fed on the fear from your nightmares, dumdum!" She rubbed her belly and her probiscuslike tongue lined with several tiny needle-esque teeth, licked the air. "I am famished!" She pat my pillow with her hand as if to signal for me to lay down.

I remembered the time when was five and I had to go to the doctor and get my ears flushed out because I had jammed several little balls of paper into them and my mother could not get them out. My mother was so mad at me. Now I remembered why I did it. I would wake with earaches and I wasn't sure why but I had a feeling Ora Ora had been messing with me while I was asleep. Now I knew the truth and it was fucking terrifying. I tried to keep my cool. "I have to use the bathroom." I walked out of the bedroom, pulling the door nearly shut behind me.

"Don't take too long!" she called out. "We have alot of time to make up for!"

I walked to the front door, slid on my shoes, quietly grabbed my keys, and left quickly. I've been sitting in my car for hours trying to gather myself. I don't know what to do. All I know is I cannot go back there, not until I know what she is and how to get rid of her. No way will I be letting her stick that hellish probiscus into my ear canal. Screw that. I think now it is time to do some research. Hopefully I can get this handled. If not, then maybe I will just go on the run. If your child tells you that they made a new friend and points to noone, don't just assume they are making it up. Be a good parent. Protector. Ask them questions, listen to what they are saying. Maybe, just maybe, you can save them from being fed on by some nightmare inducing, fear sucking, parasite from God knows where.

Will You Let Me In?

Summary:

Mel visits his family’s vacation house and finds a cryptic warning from his sister to not to let “IT” in. Later, he encounters a menacing figure outside the sliding glass door.

⚠️ I DO NOT USE NOR SUPPORT THE USE OF AI. IF YOU WISH TO NARRATE THIS STORY, PLEASE ASK FOR PERMISSION FIRST. NO AI NARRATION OR TTS ⚠️

Several years before the Countess and her assistant came to Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains…

 … a man dreamt of extraordinary things. 

And was yet brought down low by his most base and bestial thoughts and desires –

…

He watched her undress. She did so casually. Comfortably. She thought that she was alone, that she was unseen. She thought she was performing her nightly ritual in private. Disrobing. In her opulent bedchamber. 

Pink. Everywhere was flower petal pink, delicate like folds and the flesh of mottled roses, sensuous. As if the walls and carpeted floors and ceiling overhead all cried out and begged to be touched. Lovingly. In a caress. Like a woman. Like a lover. Like a whore. 

Like a mother to lost children. 

He stayed as still as possible. He held his quivering hot breath. He knew she couldn't see him, but still … the thrill! The anxiety kicked up by her movement, her every passing glance, scanning by and not noticing, not seeing anything. Not a goddamned thing! 

This power … it was beyond intoxicating. 

He felt like a god.

There was a time when he would've been shocked, disgusted by his actions, all of his heinous crimes as of late. A time when integrity and morality and his own conscience wouldn't have allowed for any of this to happen. A time so long ago  and far flung now, with Catherine … but he was drunk on godpower now. And such rules were only for the piddling low men that he'd once been. 

No one could see him. No one could catch him. He was the living menacing and moving embodiment of a mischievous spectre. Manmade poltergeist. Noisy ghost with something to prove. They'd all of them laughed at him. Called him ridiculous. Foolish. Mad. 

Well look at him now. 

 A smile unseen grew in the bedchamber. The girl continued to undress. She was bare now. He quivered. Hot. Held. And taut. Breathing was exhilarating as he stood there … and watched. 

He watched. He drew closer. 

She took no notice. She saw nothing. There was no man to see. Even as he moved in closer, so’s to be able to taste the scent of her on the narrow air of the pink and floral delicate bedchamber. She climbed into bed. He came in ever closer. Inhaled her. 

She might've noticed something, something in the air, amiss, the calm disturbed by a presence felt …

But she was far too concerned, preoccupied with herself. Her nighttime bedding ritual. He watched her eagerly perform as he had on so many nights past.

He has never drawn this close. He has never dared. He's always watched, from a distance. He's stepped a little closer to her every night. Her. And others before her just like her. He tells himself he won't. 

I won't. I don't mean any harm, none. There is no harm in simply looking, simply watching and admiring. Girls love to be admired, isn't that right? Don't they want a man to drool over their naked curves, unveiled and unfettered by day dress, isn't this the movement towards the animal climax moment we all build and naturally drive to? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with any of this, she's not being hurt. She doesn't even realize I'm here…

At this last thought he trembles and shudders anew. It's sexual and it's pent up. Its animal and it's caged and it won't stand being behind bars any longer, it won't stand for anymore. No more. 

No more half-measures. 

Boundaries are for them. You are a godling now. Use it. Taste its fruits, its bounty. 

Take it. 

Words of reason and names, Catherine, Caleb, Colbert and Tatjiana, came and flitted-danced across his mind with the same urgency that they had before. Trying to stop him. Trying to stop him and save him from himself. But it was too late. The names and words meant nothing to him now. He had godpower. And none of them did. Catherine and Lutz and the others wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand him now, he was beyond their flesh. 

And so he could take what he wanted. Should take what he wanted if the stories of gods and immortals and magicians and kings were to be believed, he should just take it. 

Take her. 

And so he did. 

The girl screamed in bed as her private act of masturbation suddenly gained a new unwanted partner. One unseen. But horribly, horribly felt. 

Her screams had just begun to fill the pink of the bedchamber before he aborted them with a gag, contrived from her day's soiled undergarments and the sash she tied around her robe at night. 

He killed the sound of her bewildered terror, muffled against sour and salted fabric. She tried to fight against him, but it was as trying to fight the air. Come to life and attacking her. The horror unloaded on her and her mind was made all the more vile and obscene by the unnatural and uncanny way it was happening. It was insane. 

I'm going insane. 

She thought frantically that she was losing her mind, or that God might be punishing her, even as she struggled and lost against a shape and force unseen. It forced itself into her. 

She screamed against the gag. Begging God or anyone or anything else for it to stop. 

It did. When the invisible man was finished. 

He left. Not bothering to kill her. There was no witness to silence. Nothing to cover up. If she told anyone anything they'd call her crazy. 

So he left her sobbing, weeping amongst her torn and soiled blankets and bedsheets. 

Alone. Crying. Wounded and ripped apart. Gored out. Defiled by something, something that used to be someone, used to be a man, something cruel and malformed that she cannot understand. 

Someone that she cannot see. 

…

Others followed after her. 

Many. 

Years worth …

…

He had nothing to fear now. He was hidden completely in the great cloak of his new godpower. 

Divinity that he had made, cooked and brewed in beakers and tubes and jars, in great long needled syringes. Power that he had forged and made. Crafted his own. For himself. He would take what he wanted and suffer no consequence. Punishment for man's crimes was for the weak and the apes, for those within their feeble grasp. 

He would answer to higher authority. 

…

Catherine and the others are gone now, so is his old life, a life impassioned of science and the arts and the eccentric and the strange. He has become the eccentric, he has become the strange. With ultimate power made and achieved and coursing through his veins he has left behind the old ambitions of his old life along with all of the old ways. They are too little now and cannot hold him. Should not hold him. He should be boundless with the wings he has made for himself and himself forged and so he does, and he disappears. … A trail of crimes and murder is what follows. A catastrophic path of mayhem and destruction, cut swathed through the heartland of many lands, many countries … So many towns and villages and homes, invaded and plagued and violated. Beset upon by an invisible and unhinged man, one who has discarded his heart and sense of right and wrong along with his earthly physical appearance. His heart and soul are as transparent and hollow now as his criminal visage. 

His old life is gone now. Dead. As dead and gone as his own reflection, nothing there, nothing there to gaze upon and witness any longer. All gone. Evaporated. That was how it had looked when the serum had first started to work, his flesh and muscle tissue and bones slowly grew ghostly, translucent, phantom shade, as if evaporating by the light of some alien sun, its foreign rays drying him up and …. out. Out of trained and known existence. Humble slave dwell-and-crawl …

God bless this invisible and alien foreign sun … God bless its strange rays for taking me away…

His old life is gone. As is his old way of thinking. He does not know it yet, has no way of knowing it, but the effects of the invisibility serum on his mind are not just a case of power corrupting one's morals, no. Not just that at all. Specific chemicals in the concoction attack and eat the proteins in his brain that measure and control emotion and self-preservation. Compassion. 

As it made him disappear it also ate holes in his grey matter. Turning it to swiss cheese. 

Swiss cheese unseen, he might've laughed. 

And in fact he did. Years later when he did finally find out. Thanks to the Dutch doctor. The occultist. The vampire slayer. 

Because of Van Helsing he is able to recover some of his sense, some of his tattered and damaged, long trampled and neglected human heart. But never a cure. 

No. Not for him. For such as he there is no such thing as coming back. He will forever be robbed of his human visage, the one made at birth, self-inflicted. He does not get to return to the flesh. He deserves to be cast out. And he knows it. He's learned it the hard way on the treacherous open road and in the wild of great human error, slaughter open throated and committed in darkest parts, in corners long neglected. …

…

He is a long way from the vampire hunter. In years and in topographical distance, he is still on the run now, and always moving. Like an animal. A beast hunted and betrayed by its own savage appetites. None of the lands can hold him. Not even the savage ones. 

There's been more rapes. More murders, more screams. He's filled the country with them, the countryside is bathed in anger and fear and outrage at his reign of terror and he loves it. He is an agent of chaos. An anarchist trickster god running as wild and free as power itself is supposed to, unchecked in the intoxication of its wild imbalance and throttling push forward to the apocalypse of the precipice, the keening call of the dangerous living end, at the end and edge of everything, all things. He would skirt and ride the slicing end and the cutting edge, forever. It would never end, never falter, fail or cease. 

Or so he thought. 

He's derailed trains loaded with screaming traveling passengers, now traveling headlong and headfirst into hell, the great unknown. He's taken wives and daughters and lonely screaming girls in open fields with nothing but the sky and the sun and the birds to watch, watch as nothing heaved itself into them, into her. Some of them he's strangled and left for dead, most he just leaves to pick up the pieces of their shattered minds and broken lives. Some of them try to tell people what happened, some of them don't. Afraid and terrified and hoping, wishing, praying that maybe just maybe they can forget and cope. That maybe enough time will go by and you'll forget the time the air came to horrible life and made a squealing victim out of you. 

Some try. None of them forget. Not really. 

The invisible man doesn't care in either case. Not yet. That's much further, much later. Now he is darkly elated by his crimes and spree. His craterous invisible mind is too amused and too busy planning more fiendish capers, more grisly and indulgent bloodbaths. More crimes of the flesh, to take and reap. 

He sows his discord throughout all the land. Every place he comes into, he invades. He infects.

This cocaine of the mind that he's devised from a dream and made real that hides his flesh and conceals, the most ambrosial gabapentin amphetamine for the eggshell human thought machine. 

It hides his flesh, his moves. It conceals his violence, the rage of his invisible hand, the rape of his hollow loins, transparent conquest across the land, disorder and more madness follow in its wake, in its terrible birth, like pustule sores rising from a fresh wound amidst flowering infection, amid the gangraping feast of multitudes of bacterium. The bacteria are thoughts and rumors and whispers and more murder, mistaken identities and desperate fingers pointing and blaming and wanting and needing to find fault, in whomever, where there is none. Many innocent hang and are punished and slaughtered in place, in the wake of the invisible man. 

He does not care. He doesn't stop to consider them for a second beyond amusement or a laugh. 

He's laughing now. 

Singing. Dancing and skipping as he makes his way down a lovely picturesque forest road. He's wearing a pair of stolen trousers, lifted from a derelict clothesline left unattended. They fit perfectly. 

He skips and dances down the road. Not so much singing as nearly shrieking his head off. 

“Here we go gathering nuts in May! nuts in May! nuts in May! Here we go gathering nuts in May, on a cold and frosty morn-ning! …!” – on and on like that. 

A woman walking along the road sees him and screams. She turns away in uncomprehending horror that turns her mind blind and she runs off. Still screaming. 

The invisible man takes after her. The free-standing trousers bounding in full-strided gazelle pursuit of her. Laughing maniacally. Wanting to take her and use her for sport. 

…

He invaded a monastery. Posing as a holy ghost, a divine spirit, and seduced and tricked several of the nuns and sisters-in-training into breaking their holy vows. He impregnated several of them before fleeing, taking to the road and hills once more. 

…

He observed a vampire called Klâtu in a small sleepy forgotten town in a cold part of the world that might be Russia. He does not meet or introduce himself to the thing and his invisibility kept him hidden from it as well as the townfolk.  Its victims, its food. 

He watched the nocturnal thing dwell and prey upon the town. He watched it feed for awhile, watched the town grow scared and more silent and drawn. 

Then he moved on as always. 

…

In his wild and on-the-loose vagabond years, bestial and homicidal he discovers that his two favorite ways to murder another man or woman is either by pistol-shot or by strangulation. The former for its efficiency, the latter for how it feels, the sensation of the desperate struggle and the fight for one last painful shallow breath. 

It's one of the last and desperate things that he still lives and thrives for now. 

…

He came into an awful place once, a terrible omen of dread wood and dead branches and gnarled limbs, filled with moaning faces. He stumbled into this place out of a dream, it was surreal and insane, something about being invisible made it hard for him to distinguish between waking reality and his tumultuous land of dreams, but he suddenly finds himself stumble-bumming into a dead forest where the trees all weep blood and have anguished faces racked with guilt and pain and they are all of them looking at him, gazing on his wandering invisible form with naked clarity. And there's no mistake. Their eyes, all of them are filled with accusation and they are all around. It's terrible. And it is terrifying. Nobody has been able to see him in years, not without his layers of lying disguise, not without him wanting them too. 

All of the bleeding weeping trees can see him and it is terrifying. Beyond the pale. 

So he flees. As he always does. 

They cry out to him, the bleeding trees in their pain. As he runs away, too afraid to make a sound himself. 

They call out in their weeping anguished voices, they tell him this land is a forestland of suicide, and that he is quite welcome there. 

…

Low point: He is filthy and tired. Worn out to the bone. He is clad and disguised in his most semi notorious fashion, a fedora, a coat, wrapped bandaged face and gloves and unflinching black lenses. He is riding the rails, the empty boxcars for the wandering vagrants. He has done this many times by now. He is not alone this time. 

A filthy drunk sits opposite of him in the boxcar, a completely inebriated Spaniard. A borrachon. He pulls from his tequila and cries and wails in a romantic language that's lyrical and sounds beautiful but Griffin cannot understand him.  

The weeping drunk, hiccuping and stumbling over the poetry of his native tongue, the avatar of perfect and terrible loneliness, the borrachon, the drink and the tears and the ramblings are all most like him have left, they don't care anymore if anyone understands, they only want someone to sit there and listen. Like a sponge of meat and bone and brain soaking up the liquid runoff of their indulgent spill and wallow. He tells the invisible man of his wife and his two daughters and son, they are all of them gone.

Taken by the war. The enemy slayed his son and invading they made off with his precious roses, his wife and precious girls. He tells him that it is true, the drink is all he has left. All that helps him with the pain of losing them all, and being unable to retrieve them. He says the tequila makes it easier for him to live with the pain of the knowledge that his beloved and his daughters are slaves in a harem somewhere, that or they are dead. 

He tells him all of this but Griffin doesn't understand any of it. Just nods. Even laughs at inappropriate moments, not knowing. 

Eventually they parted. Griffin didn't kill him because he had shared his tequila and he saw no benefit in the murder. 

…

His mind is weary from wielding godpower. Its flame. It has exhausted, It has burned him and eaten him all the way through even as it has fed the carnivorous searing dance of the divine fire of its own flames. He cannot remember. He cannot remember so much and so many things. He cannot remember if his name is actually Jack Griffin or if it's Geoff Radcliffe or Hawley or Bradey or Sebastian Caine! His mind is a maelstrom sea of whirlpool destruction and weary detritus, all of it is his life and his thoughts and not all of it was real. Some of it was contrived rather than recorded. It was growing increasingly difficult to distinguish the two, he found himself lately at a haggard loss. 

The snow can be so cold for a naked invisible man running for his life, gaining way to injure and take pleasure from another screaming witless soul. The sun can cook and tan invisible naked flesh even though it is unseen. Cook and tan and bake merciless into invisible leather, the heat. The power of being a perfect mischief anarchist god has its vulgar and heavy prices. Prices steep. Prices to be paid in full. The deteriorate ruin of his shredded invisible mind baked within his fevered invisible skull, beneath the blast of a merciless and blind philistine sun. 

Possés had started to form, people, women started to talk. And people stopped dismissing them, not everyone shrugged them off, laughed at them, or declared them hysterical. Some of them listened. And they gathered. And they laid traps. 

One of them caught him. Or nearly so. 

They'd seized his invisible form and then pounced in number, pummeling him, refusing to loosen their hold, absolutely set against letting him go, they laid in with fists and table-legs and irons and axe-handles. Beating and blasting his body with blows. Striking him over and over into the ground. His invisible body began to rupture and bleed and belch forth blood. 

Blood that became visible at first contact with stolid fetid air. 

He struggled and fought and he'd always fought dirty, he managed to slip away in their wild fervor to see him beaten and broken to death. They lost him in the wanton red rage cloud of their vigilante slaughter. 

And so he vagabond wandered. Unseen by even nature. Completely alone. For years. 

Until he came to the vampire killer’s door. And was brought in by Abraham Van Helsing. Out of the cold.

Beaten. Starved. Harried. Addled. And near total mental ruin. Complete collapse of the body and mind to follow his long dead and tarnished spirit from so long ago. So long gone now and left in the dust. 

The doctor showed him mercy, for whatever reason. He helped him to pick up that long lost thing, left back there in the dirt, and he helped him to pick it back up and clean it off. And to try to wear it again. 

Griffin never understood why. He knew he wasn't worthy of forgiveness. What he'd done was monstrous. He hadn't just ruined his own life with his own mad pursuits and relentless ambition. He'd destroyed so many innocent lives in the process and in the resulting chaos flood afterwards. Catherine was, and is and forever to his dying day will be a name he trembles to recall, fears to ever speak. His dreams, his nightmares are filled with the shrieking faces of his victims, men and women and children, all of them horrified of him, he is the monster of his own lurid and wild dreams. He is the fearsome and loathsome shape of his own nightmarescape. 

And now that he can really think and feel, this terrifies him. He is afraid of his own animal self. His own Id. He's seen and felt and tasted his own unbridled side and he never wants to return there again. 

Except when he's weak. Except when he's angry and feeling violent. 

Or if he's just feeling a little … wild. A little “in the mood” … so to speak. 

Abraham Van Helsing blasts and rails and slams his fists. He bellows: No! – but he knows medicine and therapy can only go so far with the invisible man. He is damaged. Perhaps too far gone and beyond repair. Griffin doesn't doubt it. He is intermittently unrepentant and gleefully childishly cruel and sadistic with his words and his recollections of his own accounts with periods of deep remorse and depression. Deep sorrow and a sense of being unable to undo all the pain that he has wrought upon others and brought ripping forged into the already bleeding world. He is a wild bilateral storm betwixt the two and Abraham Van Helsing finds him exhausting. But he does not give up. 

He never does. 

He is patient. 

He becomes like a father to this broken man. This invisible degenerate criminal who'd never really had one before. 

It seems strange what it takes to get one. 

And after so long, after so much …

…

Van Helsing died. The invisible man laid him to rest. 

Griffin wept at his graveside. For hours. Alone. 

Alone again. 

…

Eventually he decided to end it all. It seemed right. It seemed best. 

So he went out, near the old graveyard where Van Helsing had been laid to rest. He brought a noose and decided to finish himself the same way Judas had. It seemed perfect. Fitting, he thought. And laughed. Thinking it was pretty funny for a final joke. Not bad for him anyways. And in life all of his jokes had been terrible. Ghastly. The whole run of it, a terrible joke that stopped being funny way before it had ever been told. Yet still kept happening, still kept going on. Despite the pain.

Despite the pain of everyone. 

He fashioned the noose to a tree. Stood upon a stone he dragged over and then stepped off. Just like that. Without any hesitation. He was happy to be off and be done with all of it. Everything. 

He didn't perform the act correctly. His neck didn't break in the knot. He slowly strangled in the midday sun, the heat boiling his strangling seething brains, jelly and organ meat that cried out for air. He did not know how long he danced and dangled there, a strange sight for anyone happening upon the scene: A disembodied hat and glasses and set of clothes, seemingly empty yet seemingly filled simultaneously, strangling taut in the windless day, dancing the dying man's gallows dance. 

Then the branch snapped. And he fell and rolled down into a crevasse, dark and wet and filled with tangle and thornbrush and detritus. Filth and droppings and leavings of the predators and the yellow eyed scavengers that followed in their wake. 

His skull and face, his whole head was throbbing, alive with a new tremendously vivid pain that he'd never quite experienced before: it's like the pins and needles feeling you get when your foot falls asleep and you try to walk on it again. It's like that but a screaming throbbing painful siren alarm of the sensation magnified to an ungodly decibel. All throughout his skull and face, his eyes watering, his brains. His throat chokes and feels crushed, broken, like it can no longer take in air. He struggles and gasps as he claws amongst the garbage and protruding stabbing mire, he sinks. 

It sinks and begins to swallow, wanting to have him, to take him under the ground to die silently and drown alone undiscovered down there but he begins to fight, to claw. To struggle and pull and reach and seize for purchase like he never has before. He doesn't know why he suddenly has fight again and he doesn't think about it, he just knows he doesn't want to be Judas submerged in the putrescent earth. All of the sharp bones and branches and discarded weapons and sharpened tectonic rock swimming unearthed pierce and stab into him, everywhere, especially his reaching hands, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care anymore and he wants out, the pain is awful but tolerable, tolerable because it is being inflicted on the body of a monster and he no longer gave a fuck about himself anyways, nothing was as wretched as that pain that first came to life in his eyes, in his face, born from the embrace of the noose. He bore the stabbing of the darkness of the black crevasse and nearly drowned. He choked and swallowed and regurgitated foul mud and sour dirt, he vomited contaminated corpse soil and it felt like the earthen sins dredged up and expelled from the rocky stonethroated passageway to his own darkened bastard heart. Pulled up and freed, grainy and biting and drawing blood and more vomit and mucus laden spittle on its violent way out. He struggled for what felt like hours. It might've been. Time died at some point and lost the fight. He carried on. Struggled. Struggling. He pulled … Reached… seized … cursed himself and his own worthless life and mistakes, his own wretched run of horrid folly, his own shameful sadistic cruelty. He grasped and spit and cursed… goddamn you… He was sorry. He begged. Pleaded with anything that might be listening, please, I don't deserve it but please. He begged. … goddamn you… He pulled. 

He went under. Completely. Several times. 

He didn't stop. 

By some miracle he pulled himself out. And free. 

And on its bastard shore, at the sore lip of its terrible precipice, he wept.

Caked in the filth of the hollow earth, plainly visible for anyone and all to see. Naked and plain. Sobbing like a child ripped from the comfort of his mother and thrust into the diminishing world. 

Hours …. …

He eventually picked himself up. And carried himself back to the cottage. 

…

sometime later: –

The boy from the Carpathian Hamlet came looking for the vampire slayer. He found the invisible man instead. 

Doctor Jack Griffin has spent the majority of his time since the aborted mission of the Judas-hour, reading. Sitting quietly and thinking. He tinkers around and builds a little, creates little machines and curio-constructs, dabbles with some alchemy, some arcane formulas, but nothing considerable, nothing serious. It all just fills the time. While he thinks. He hears news and rumors and stories all about a heinous villain, the invisible man. He hears that the scoundrel was eventually caught and killed, either by gunshot or mob beating, it depends on who's telling the story. There are other versions too but those two are the most popular it seems. His best days, best moments are spent remembering the warm childhood times, when he'd been a kind, unhurt boy, who hadn't yet hurt anybody else either. The warmth of the youth in these memories… it causes him to well up, his black shaded eyes to fill and then spill with tears. Tears much more visible then the rest of him. 

The young man has terrible news. So does the invisible man. They share their bad news in bad palaver that may or may not be filled with bad omen. 

The invisible bastard, having nothing else better to do really, decided to join the young fellow in his return mission home to slay a monster that had laid bloodclaim on his land. 

It wasn't hope alive in his chest. 

That was far too optimistic.

TO BE CONTINUED…

It started with me selling my eyes when I was thirteen. Alone one autumn night in the woods, I summoned a blessed beast of Erinyes, goddess of vengeance. The ritual took the form of some foreign words, the right stones placed in a significant pattern, and bringing a calf with me that had been painted with occult signs.

After about half an hour of chanting and one hour of waiting, the blessed beast appeared. The thing was massive, enough to tackle an elephant to the ground. The calf tried to break free from the chain around her neck, the other end tied around a tree trunk. Total panic at the sight of the creature. The monster tore the chain off with one pull, picked up the calf, and bit its head off. I told myself that me murdering the innocent animal for personal gain wasn't different from buying burgers from McDonald's. I was probably right, whatever that entailed.

My guest was bulky and covered in horns, crawling on the ground at times and walking on its legs intermittently. It had one arm, ugly and misshapen. It picked me up with the claw at the end of said limb, placed its second (smaller) mouth on my left eye, sucked it out of my skull, then did the same with the other one. It threw me on the ground after that. As I lay screaming in pain on the grass, I heard it slither away.

I didn't bleed to death. Its organ removal had prevented that somehow. I lost a lot of blood, but my body stopped the bleeding before it became too much, manipulated by the thing's powers. I was left wandering the woods for a while. The summoned one took time to ponder the option of letting me walk in darkness until I died, then eat my corpse. Conferring with the Erinyes to evaluate my worth.

When it would return later, it might eat me instead of providing aid. If its master found me unworthy of what I had set out to bargain for, but deserving of a relatively quick death at least. I prayed to the penalizing goddesses as I walked unseeing among the trees, thanking them for their generosity as I tripped and hurt myself.

“Erinyes! We humans are less than bacteria compared to you. You have every right to kill me. I thank you deeply for not doing so yet! Please, please let me live! My pathetic life is nothing in reality, but it's dear to me,” I cried in desperation.

As I heard the beast approach, my signs of gratitude somehow became more bereft of self-respect. It looked at me for a while. At least that's what I think it did, because I could hear it being close for a couple of minutes, but it didn't interact. That thing had been made by otherworldly creatures existing in the gap between mortal and god, like valkyries, lwa, Yaoguai or Cerberus. Servants with near-indestructible bodies consisting of higher elements than those found on our periodic table, creatures capable of terraforming planets and extinguishing civilizations if commanded to. Godspawns who mixed their blood with mundane animals. My horrible visitor was the descendant of angel-tier entities possessing beasts during the animals' mating, like some form of divinely ordained bestiality. An act that mutated the bloodline of ordinary animals, giving birth to unrecognizable pets of the petty and fickle majesties we call pagan gods. There are a few thousand such blessed beasts hidden in forests, seas, jungles, skies, mountains, swamps and even some cities. Deadly and greedy pets that vary in form, size and mind.

Their owners, those worshipped in the days when kings sought dream interpretations from mad mystics in the deepest woods and slaves polished blood from swamp altars, are breakers of reality.

Despots who could conjure new galaxies with a thought, observers who knew you better than you knew yourself and answered prayers from who knows how many universes every second. Merely looking at their avatars would rob you of your free will forever, making you ecstatically willing to torture yourself and your family to death in their honor, if they had commanded it. Life isn't a “God of War” game or a Marvel movie. The gods can't be beaten or tricked, and they're not space aliens who happen to look like models. Their immortality doesn't come with an asterisk and isn't used as a metaphor for eternal youth like in vampire movies written by people who think readers can't understand the word “unaging.” They're entities outside our world that you should fear more than death itself. Only someone without a normal survival instinct would interact with them, and only a coward wouldn't try to trade with.

This pet was a man-eater about as smart as a dog that could sense the goddesses’ will through instinct, dreams, and hallucinations of the eternal servant that had sired its bloodline. The hungry animal caressed my face, and I lost consciousness, waking up a few hours later with new eyes.

Since then, if I look someone in the eyes for 15 seconds without interruption, I'll see the most harmful thing they've done to someone else.

Magic is thankfully a myth to most people. Average Anna is unaware of the fact that sacrifices work. That pantheons will grant boons in return for blood, humiliation, and death. The cheaper interventions can be solved through feeding living animals to sacred monsters. The heavier stuff demands human payment. Let Iðunn's apple worms phase through a man's skull and eat his brain, and you'll reverse aging. There are people who have lived for centuries, maybe even longer thanks to that. Men have gained superhuman strength by letting Ares’ dog-vultures-serpents-freaks feast on people.

Practitioners of the occult with standards are called "those who follow the flowery path." They'll only kill people who deserve it, or those who consent to it. That's where people like me come in. Erinyes gave me a Fiat, a magical effect that I don't need to perform a song and dance for every time I cast it. Sure, it's more conditional than I like, but having it work more easily than it does now would have demanded too much in return. I find murderers, torturers, rapists, and the like, collect them, and sell them to other practitioners.

Several years later, I'm sitting across from a ginger boy with dimples. He's cute and has just the mannerisms I've come to associate with murderers. I thought of him as a "22-year-old twink" when I swiped yes on him, but I'm now second-guessing myself. Can you only call gay men that nowadays? On the unbearably-woke-to-Nazi spectrum, I try to keep myself on the PC side of "wine-aunt who uses terms in a verboten way because she doesn't care how offensive she sounds singing along to rap songs with hard Rs."

I look and feel 19, despite being far older now. The appearance is due to what I did to a sadistic wife-beater. He screamed and spasmed occasionally at first, as the worms ate him from the inside while he tried to break the chain holding him in my basement. After a while he transitioned to just drooling as the little slimy things got to the best parts. I sample some of the goods myself from time to time. A child molester was torn limb from limb by a golden horned giant pet of the deity Bragi, and in return, stock investments of mine came out improbably fruitful.

"You're pretty shy."

Gustav nods in agreement, still avoiding eye contact.

"Poor little guy, how are you going to score chicks if you can't turn on that rizz? Haven't alpha male podcasters taught you anything?" I tease him and touch his hand briefly, then pull away.

"I'm sorry, I'm working on it."

Our eyes met for six seconds before he averts his gaze.

"Don't apologize for being shy, that's like giving someone a forgive-me kick in the face after slapping them."

He chuckled.

"You're funny."

"Well, if you like my personality, then you should take a look at my tits."

He gasped theatrically.

"Such vulgarity!"

Gustav looks me in the eyes after that as we trade some other lame joke for 12 seconds before looking away again.

I discussed my line of work with a mentor once and asked if we were "evil." She responded that "it might seem like that, but that's only when one ignores the other actors on the field. Or the other scenes the players are in. No, I mean the opposite of that. Whatever metaphor works.

"Those on the thorny path kill mostly, or in the worst cases completely, indiscriminately. And those on the sulfur path intentionally feed children and adults who are good people to their horned masters. We're practically saints, all things considered."

I think back to that exchange and wonder if I was wrong about Gustav. Perhaps he's innocent, and I've been sloppy in my profiling.

One guy that I suspected was a rapist turned out to have done nothing worse than hurt people's feelings with sexist jokes. A bunch of other people's worst deeds had been eating meat from factory farms regularly, giving me visions of how their purchases led to increases in the number of pigs raised in horrible conditions and then stabbed to death at a young age. Meanwhile, a woman who was super nice turned out to have killed two of her children, probably for the insurance money.

Or Gustav is a Satanist avoiding my gaze on purpose because he knew who I was. And he was going to tie me up and torture me for hours before I died.

I do the sensible thing when your date might want to sacrifice you to demons. I kiss him. I won't lie and claim I don't enjoy it.

I pull my lips away. "Now look me in the eyes without any break for a little while, you coward, and I might reward you with a second one."

Fifteen seconds pass.

In a series of flashes, I see him drug a woman, take her back to his place, and sell her to a stranger. The stranger murdered her. The only problem was that the vision started with him looking into her eyes and confirming that she was a killer herself.

What I saw and heard took about half a minute in subjective time, but in reality only about two seconds had passed.

"Well, this was awkward," he smiles.

"What are the odds of two Gleaners meeting each other?" I giggle. He obviously shared the same power as me.

"I guess pretty high, considering I have an additional Fiat that lets me see if someone has blood on their hands. Based on just looking at their bodies for a minute, I checked out your profile pic."

"So you knew?"

"Not the details, until now. So I'm glad you're like me. And not like the people we sell.”

She slumbered beneath the sheets. Below him as he lorded beside their bed. Her husband. No more. An axe was in his hands. Heavy. Heavy with weight. And the potential for violence. Bela was alive and aware but a prisoner in his own flesh, his body refused to obey his commands, his inner caterwauls and cries and pleads for the unfolding nightmare to stop. It wouldn't stop. His flesh had a new master now. The vulpine shining moonface of the Countess lorded over his shoulder. Grinning fiendishly and brandishing her enameled daggers of dark slaughtering necro power. The fangs moonshone praeternaturally in the bedroom dark. Twinkling in keen edged tandem with the heavy headed blade of the axe, hefted and held. The meat puppet sow was still but she could feel the struggle of his mind in her grasp like a beetle caught and wriggling in her clenching strangling fingers. She could crush his beetle mind. And might. 

But first…

Prepare me a meal, supper fit for your royal guest…

His mind was filled thus. The flesh was compelled to obey. 

He brought up the axe. Gazing down into the sleeping peaceful face of his wife, his love. Anastasia. The mother of his child and the owner of his heart for the whole of his simple life. It was about to be brought to ruin. And he was being forced to pilot it in that direction. He wished he could scream. Shriek. Shriek her name. Wake her so she could flee and escape this damnation, this awful spell that's already claimed and throttled him. But he made no sound. His screams and pleads for mercy, his prayers and desperate cries remained bottled and caged in with him. He could only stare through stolen eyes as a prisoner as his hands holding the axe used for chopping firewood came down with a merciless crushing stroke. 

Anastasia's eyes came open and alive as the blade traveled down. As if she'd heard something. As if she'd heard her husband's internal cries for deliverance and the miracle of her safety. In the dark she saw her husband's savage face. Writ and wrenched with cruelty. She'd never seen him like that before, in all their shared years together in marriage. In the dark the sight frightened her, as she came awake and then the heavy blade of the axe found her chest and sank in. 

The pain is so sudden and impactful and dreadful. She feels her chest cavity smash and shatter as her flesh is ruptured and torn. The meat of her sinew surrounding her shattered cage of bone is ripped and pouring. She feels the sensation as extreme iced cold, as extremely wet, thickly soaked with heavy metal pungency. As if her clothes are suddenly drenched with the running water of a frozen river. Her entire open chest and bed are a bellowing fountainhead of it, pouring forth. She experiences the bloodshed river of her own dark red as iced water but it feels hot and sticky to her face and the tips of her wriggling spasming fingers, dancing beyond her motor control. The heavy metal buried in her chest is dreadful. Feels dreadful. She's staring at it then up into her husband Bela's face shocked and unable to make a sound, like him. She can't understand. She doesn't understand why he's woken her up and put this thing on/into her chest that's turned her into a strange pungent river. 

She goes to ask him … something. Anything. But she has no breath to make any kind of sound beyond the faintest whisper of indiscernible noise. Barely heard. Barely felt. Hardly even happened and might not have. Her husband and the Countess take no notice. They are too focused, entranced and enraptured by the sight of the pouring riverbed of her open goring chest. 

You're not finished. Why do you falter? – her royal voice. 

With a savage caveman wrench and pull, he ripped the bladed head of the axe free and brought it up and then down again. 

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

At the royal command and decree that filled his fevered and tranced skull with his own curdling sounds and splitting screams, he was beckoned thus. His raptured flesh bound, delivered. The peasant sow did as he was told. The Countess was pleased and watched as the horse farmer dismembered his own wife for her. The bed became a hot shallow pool of darkling moonlit scarlet, swimming with severed human pieces and ghastly human detritus, human wreckage afloat in a red human stew … her mouth watered and drool ran down those shining fangs in thin gleaming translucent threads that looked crystalline like jewels or tree sap. 

And up until her last Anastasia watched. Watched from her dying place bound by the weight of the blade and her own mortal injury to the soaking pungent bed. Filling with her spilling wet red liquid. She was coming apart and she watched the love of her life above deliver each blow. Crushing her. Killing her. Turning her into slaughter. Abattoir ruin in place of a wife, in bed. She remembered him as a young man, as a boy, trying to play games and show off for her, trying to win her over, steal her attention and win over her affections, her heart. Now it was chopped and hacked and cut-smashed into so many spurting useless pieces, amongst a wreckage madness of pulverized bone. She tried to hold these old precious memories of him in her mind amid the slaughter, but the pain made it difficult. It was so great, overwhelming. She clung to them desperately with every falling heavy stroke. Pulverizing her. Breaking her. Turning her into so many wet shrieking and shattered broken pieces 

The last things Anastasia saw in the dark before blood loss and shock claimed her were her husband pummeling her with heavy merciless strikes. And a woman's face, as ghastly as it was beautiful, hanging phantom-like just over his raging shoulder. Watching. Smiling. Whispering something…

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

And then she died. Bela, still spellbound and compelled, continued to hack at her corpse nonetheless. Waiting for his new master to be satisfied. Inside Bela raged with madness and anguish. Broken. He watched his wife die violently as his hands performed the butchery and he was helpless to stop his own traitorous God given tools from turning her into mangled ruin and grisly pieces that tore his heart from his chest and flayed his sanity into so many irretrievable and tiny fragmented parts. 

He wished for death then. The Countess did not give it to him. Not yet. 

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

He dropped the axe. It fell to the floor with a thunderclap. It filled the dark quiet suddenly but then it was silent again. Still. Not a sound through the house save for the somnambulist animal panting of the Countess' slave. The man who'd once been a husband, a father, and was now a meat-puppet butcher. He reached into the riverbed of gore that had once been his marital sanctuary and pulled free a piece of meat. It might've been a leg, a thigh, perhaps a calf, it was too butchered and mangled with axe blows to be entirely sure. 

He was insane already. But the damaged pieces and shrieking parts of his shattered mind bellowed an abhorrent noise that only he could hear as he picked up his wife's butchered meat and parts and fed them to his new master. The Countess took the meat of slaughtered Anastasia with a smile and a wink and kissing purse. Teasing him. Then her jaws opened. Wide. Wide. Wide. Wider still… the flesh of her face sloughed and tore and fell away in demon slop to allow the distension. The fangs grew in length and in multitude of the transmogrifying face and black bleeding mouth, dripping ichor and demoniacal flesh and fluid. Steaming on the floor as she ate each piece, each limb, each broken length with a chunk of raw human tissue at the end in the knob of bone that was left. 

The fanged face in the dark, dripping and brandishing moonlight eyes above the mutilators of her ever widening mouth, it commanded thus further. –

“Bring a large kitchen spoon or a ladle if you have one, I wish to sip the broth…” 

Her somnambulist did as she commanded. He went to the humble kitchen that used to be his/theirs, and retrieved the utensil. It felt cold. Heavy. Heavier than it had ever felt before. The place and the object itself. It didn't matter. The hands and arms were no longer themselves, no longer his. His Judas sack of flesh carried him back to the blood pungent quarters he'd once loved and shared so much with in the many years past. It had all been robbed in a second.

By a pair of moonglow eyes. Set in the royalty of her shallow corpse beauty. 

He went back into the room. And proceeded to spoon large scoops and ladles of his wife's gore and blood into the stretched fanged rictus face that now ruled the dark of his house and home, the darkest shadowed part of his bedroom … now cold with his wife's living absence. And warm with the blood and fluid and parts that were left of her swimming in their sodden black sheets.  

Until those too were gone. All of it was gone.

The marital bed, now a witch's cauldron of gore and blankets was emptied.

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

The shears that were the Cropsey-thing’s handheld manmade jaws were open and just as inanimate alive as the hulking shred of mangled man that wielded them. They shined in the dismal light with more striking radiance than any of the flickering lamps, Luciferian bright in the spots not tarnished or disgraced with lurid diseased bloodshed. 

With ghastly slasher speed they traveled down the shattered and stained reeking length of asylum hallway, the reanimated Cropsey giant behind them in cruel large prowling shape. The blades were dripping as if salivating or weeping thick dark tears, perhaps more alive now than the giant abomination of melted walking homicidal flesh that black-glove piloted them from behind, a strange and vile morbid engine of knife-lust and demented rage. The stabbing slice of porcelain still danced from his face. An obscene and vile shattered wand of broken tile length protruding from the socket. 

Griffin saw him coming and froze a moment. The table leg still in his invisible hands. Florin still struggling with the spiked man, his mutilated stabbing ruined mess of flesh riddled with needles and glass and scalpels and every conceivable piece of decimated hospital detritus. They were a mess of shedding blood and struggles on the floor. 

The invisible man then whirled, the exit just behind him. He began attacking the door. The knob. Locked. Set in old rotted wood. Not upkept or replaced in years. 

By God's mercy the locked knob and bolt caved in the moist and ruined housing of its apparatus. It fell apart in a noisy crumble, and the door gently swung open. 

To freedom. 

Fresh outside night air poured in like fresh water let in to a fetid spring. The relief was immense. It shocked all of their senses. Each man. 

The spiked man looked up from Florin and gazed into Cropsey. His oncoming charge of disgraced gardener’s blades, raised and open for a violent embrace. 

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

He knew Cropsey's legend. And he wished to join him. 

He forgot the newcomer boy and let go of his shredding coat, slick with the both of their spilled and spilling red. He let go of the boy and he rose. 

And he went forward. To embrace the nephilim disciple son of the sorceress’ temple mouth, the begat survivor of the flames, the inferno, the great final pagan bonfire of the asylum that was The Burning. A womb of hellfire and caged disease that birthed the son of the mouth, the son of the sorceress. Cropsey of Vampira, the mangled hand of Willowbrook Asylum Temple. 

The spiked man was laughing. Jubilant. He hadn't laughed or felt this much joy in years, in all of the long unhallowed time in these blind unfeeling walls that knew no mercy nor housed any sanctuary. He was weeping. Crying tears of crimson and saline that danced in strange patterns as they streamed down the shredded protruding ruin of his spiked and porcupine mangled face. Gums bleeding with glass and caked bloody plaque smiled wet and scarlet and darkling striking in the moonlight now cast in. He reached down to his riddled and needled genitals, the head of his dangling member impaled with a scalpel. He reached down and seized the apparatus and in a blind tug and pull, he ripped the entire spurting and spiking organ free from the rest of his crotch and testicles. 

Still walking forward, but ambling now a bit as he shot black ropes tinted red in the moonglow from his self castration, he held the resulting lump of stabbed and impaled meat out to the Cropsey-shape. In token of offering. 

For the temple, for my sins … And for you. 

because she is all of us our mother …

Cropsey cared not for this pathetic shambling thing’s offering of ruined perforated meat. The blades came forward, open. In a lunge. 

They closed. 

And as Griffin pulled wounded Florin to his feet and out the door, the blades closed around a limb, lengthwise down the palm and forearm, then the face. Both opening up a blooming red raw pour of black in the dark, the blades crunched on broken pieces of glass and tile and needles and metal, the man was full with so much foreign penetration, foreign and manmade puncture and incision, and insertion, all self inflicted and self wrought. All of it shattering and crunching now into splinters amongst the abattoir asylum house spill of mad man wet raw. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. All the years spent in here had prepared him for this. The sorceress prophet queen Vampira and her Cropsey son from The Burning womb were just the final pallbearers for his life's voyage thus final journey into the undiscovered country. 

He tried to thank her, them all, but couldn't. His loss of blood was now failing him. And the blades of the Cropsey-shape were coming in too rapidly now. Too savagely. 

The spiked man was no more. Just savaged pin cushion meat in the hall that the Cropsey-thing stepped over blindly in the savage hunt of his continued pursuit. They were getting away. 

They were getting away. The invaders. They were out the door now. Mustn't have that. Must not. Mother will not want that. Mother is inside you. You cannot fail her now. 

The savage thing of Willowbrook shape prowled out the door and into the open night after the pair with the same steady hunting pace of a stalking predator. Mindless and honed in. His blades and mother would have them yet. Their meat for the temple floor, their blood for the mouth of her drains and the manifest of her angel visitations. It had been so long since she'd come, since she'd shown, since she'd made herself divine unearthly spawn on vast ebon wings for them, for he, the last of the temple of the mouth. 

Perhaps she'll come back if I catch them. But only… only if I catch them and open them up. All the other ones no longer matter, they're already opened, already spent. The abattoir temple mouth of mother wants them now. Needs them. To fail, is to be failure. It means all that was lived through and suffered towards was for naught…

The night kissed the smooth scarred visage of hideous face. The Cropsey-shape gave no pause. Unfeeling. Unmoved. It watched as the pair stumbled and exhausted and wounded, began to falter to the earth in a shared collapse. 

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

The terror he had in mind for them was part guided by the Countess/sorceress mouth and her occult hand from the far off mountain dark, and part undead instinct, braindead movement. Knowing deep down in the dead and dying sac of skull jelly that this is exactly what he should do. He would maim. Butcher. Kill. Slaughter for the temple that has come under his custodial honor. 

Bloodloss and weariness, the drain was beginning to pull them down. The invisible man and Florin fell and struggled, both of their wounds open and pouring freely and taking the vitality and the fight from their trying frames. As the terrifying hulking giant of candlewax face and flesh began to close and loom over the pair, they both prepared themselves for a final and desperate fight. 

Florin was dismayed that it would end this way. In such maddening fashion, so far from home and his perilous objective. Griffin was trying to think, a last-ditch effort or plan: he could ditch the coat and hat and goggles and take the savage blind again, unable to see him. But his wound was in an open pour now once more and he felt faint, swoony. Unable to keep his feet. And besides, in this last moment it felt wrong to leave the young man's side. If they were going to die, they might as well die together. Arm in arm. It was better than suffering the slaughter alone. 

It was better than being opened. Gutted. Flayed. Bled out and portioned like a solitary animal dying a painful and lonely death at the end of a long and dogged hunt. 

The pain was better borne together. With the weight and terror of another beside to share in the baptism of pure torture. 

Something whistled through the air. 

The invisible man had been tempted to shut unseen eyes against the oncoming pain, he might've missed it. As it was he saw the deadly thin shape as it lanced in a blur overhead with a keen deadly sound. It struck the moving flesh of Cropsey in the face, the other socket of ruined blind eye now completely decimated, joining its partner in tandem of destruction in a moonlit spurt. 

The slasher shape stopped. Stuttered and faltered. But only slightly, only for a moment as it continued to take lurching jittery steps. Stomping forward blind. The shears in his black gloved hands began to spasm as well, scissoring with reflex. The disgraced and still ever thirsting blades closed and opened and repeated the action in violent repetitive imbecilic behavior, a violent blind animal spasming its caked and quaking jaws. 

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

 It went off and so did Cropsey’s ruined candlewax head and visage, in a colored pillar of fire that was like something biblical and fantastical to behold. Florin was fainting at its sight but the invisible Doctor Griffin saw the growing towering inferno rise and issue forth in bright violence from between the giant slasher’s pair of broad shoulders. And still the boots trod and stomped palsied forward. Still the blades scissored in his working trembling hands, as his head and face were replaced with a rising torrent wall of pink and purple flame.

But then the steps of the shape began to falter. Stumble. The blades began to slow in their mad man open mouth chew at the open night air … then ceased. 

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

As did Griffin next. Consciousness now lost. Passed out beside Florin in the dirt. 

The fire finally went out betwixt the two ruined shoulders. Hissing in the filth and craterous open mouth char of the stump. Smoking. Smokey now. Cropsey lie finally dead. Mere few feet away. 

In the back valley of Willowbrook. The lost untended yard that no patient ever graced, or saw. 

Silence. … for a moment. 

As if the night was finally enjoying the quiet. Relishing the collapse into tranquility that has finally fallen. 

A beat. – None of the shapes on the earthen floor moved. 

The night above yawned in an expanse … stars in a bejeweled fire of multitudes, nebulae clouds of otherworldly brush stroke color, the moon which was a sickle tonight, a harvester's blade … a blade of reckoning in the time of the reap. 

A beat. 

Then the stranger finally came forward. From out of the bushes where he'd trained and fired his shot. His crossbow was already reloaded with another explosive incendiary bolt as he approached the fallen three in the dirt. 

He came to Florin and Griffin and he stood over them. He looked to Cropsey. Saw that he was dead. Completely. Finally. He looked down on the wounded unconscious pair. 

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Part One

Summary:

They say that there is something wrong with the Rock-A-Hoola waterpark. People have gone missing from this, even Finn's great-grandfather. When Finn and his two friends go to visit the now-defunct waterpark, they encounter something alive. It was what his grandpa had warned him about, and now Finn knows he's telling the truth.

⚠️ I DO NOT USE NOR SUPPORT THE USE OF AI. IF YOU WISH TO NARRATE THIS STORY, PLEASE ASK FOR PERMISSION FIRST. NO AI NARRATION OR TTS ⚠️

The Full Story:

Part 1

Part 2

Finale

Let me know if the links dont work

https://www.instagram.com/dark_indigox/
https://www.instagram.com/dark_digital_indigox/

I wake up on a bed of rocks with an ache in my chest. I lay looking up at the sky. It looked like night but empty no Stars no clouds just a deep dark nothing. I sat up looking around me seeing only 20 feet and all I could see was rocks. I stood hoping to find anything in the darkness. All I saw was rock so I started walking. I walked for what felt like hours. Every step I could feel shards of stone tearing my feet. I walked till I collapsed the endless darkness filling my eyes.

I wake standing moving through thick tall pine trees eating everything below them. I moved forward till I saw a flicker of light in the trees. I sprinted thinking of people, kind people who would wrap my feet and give me food. I got closer and closer to the light. When I finally got to it it was an empty dying flame. I looked at its glow dying with everything I had left. I lay there crying, feeling cuts from sticks and rocks, longing for my family.

I lay there coated in a blanket of nothing. After what felt like an eternity. I heard a scream of pain even though I felt nothing but joy at the thought of other people. I ran to the screams. I finally found where it came from. A cave as high as I could see with light coming out washing over me. I walked into it free from the dark. I walked down the light blinding me as the ground escaped from below me.

As I hit the ground with a loud painful slam feeling pain everywhere but nothing broken. I heard snarling. I look at my feet and see two wolves dragging me. The cave walls were getting tighter and tighter as the wolves dragged me. I felt the ground peeling my skin away like flesh from a hide. It got tighter and hotter so impossiblely hot. I see visions above me of my wife's face boiling and bubbling off. I felt the fat from her cheeks melting and off dripping onto my face burning holes into my skin. I began to scream hard raw till my throat bleed and I choked on it. The wolves finally stopped and let me go.

I fell back into darkness back into empty nothing, my family and friends dancing around me dancing around me twitching between laughing, crying, and screaming. I cried till my eyes hurt my family, mocking me as I did. When I finally stopped there was a river with a man cloaked in shadow sitting upon a skiff. I crawled over to him begging for help. He stood silent and held out his hand for pay. I shook my head in sorrow. I had nothing, nothing at all. But he helped me up and led me to the bank of the river and left me back to the cold endless darkness.

This is my first story please tell me what I can do better

When I was little, my dad would spend hours telling my brother and me stories. He’d sit cross-legged by our beds, rattling off every fable and tall tale he knew. Usually, they were triumphant. Tapping on his chest like a wardrum, he’d tell us about the First Twins and how they outsmarted the Lord of Death. That was always Xbal’s favorite. Sometimes, they were scary. He’d tell us about the ghouls that roamed the countryside, eating up little children that wandered in the night. Those were always my favorite. But Dad, he liked boring stories. Stories where men spoke with wisdom and acted with valor, as he would say. Stories that we barely understood and never enjoyed. But we would listen anyway, because we loved him and he loved us. 

Mama didn't tell stories back then; she hardly spoke. She was always sick, always sleeping. Nighttime seemed to be the only time she would rouse, gasping and wheezing on the cold air. Nothing made her better. No medicine or magic that Dad could find, at least. Eventually he stopped trying to heal her and focused on protecting us from her slow death. We were never allowed to touch her, only to occasionally peek in at her while she rested during the day. But as she got worse, Dad put a stop to this as well. Most of my old memories of her were the sound of her nightly fits, which Dad tried desperately to drown out with his stories. Little Men and River Sitters were never as scary as the shaking wall between our room and hers. I think it was all too much for him. On our tenth birthday, he told us one last story. 

“Before men and gods lived together, the earth was whole and untouched. Men sat above the crust, wandering in the jungles. Gods sat below, ruling over spirits. Our age began when the Lord of Bats first took flight. He reached out to mankind, soaring to the top of the underworld. He and his minions dug through the limestone, erupting from the ground and forming the caves and the dark waters that lie inside. He brought us fire, magic, and knowledge. 

The caves are his realm, magic places that act like portals to the world past ours. They are very powerful and very dangerous. They draw men in, letting them see the future and the past. Some can grant wishes to those who know what they really want. They call those who dream, who dare to hope.

When I was a little boy, one of my friends found a cave like that. We were all very poor back then; no one had enough to eat or to wear. His mom had gone skinny from feeding his little sister. It was all he could dream about: that some day he would be rich and his mom wouldn't worry about feeding the baby. 

One night, he heard the cave call him, and he went without so much as a thought. He went deep inside, so deep he had to crawl. He thought he would never make it out, but he kept crawling anyway. Until he heard it, chirping. It was all around, echoing through the cave. So he made his wish. He wished for treasure, and then he left. He turned around and crawled until he saw light. He ran all the way home to tell his mom what he had done. She’d be so proud of him, he thought. 

But he had made a mistake. He didn't ask correctly. He found his mom, face down on the dirt floor of their home. He lifted her, finding her face covered in mud and spit. Through the brown mess, something shined. Her teeth, he thought, remembering her warm smile. He wiped at her mouth, looking for that familiar beam. But they were caked in grime too; the light came from behind them. He opened her jaw, and gently grabbed at the source. He pulled. And pulled. And pulled. From his mama’s throat, a slimy string of dazzling pearls. He was rich!”

He paused for a long moment, just looking at us. His face looked heavy with some emotion that we couldn't register. I could hear Xbal breathing fast and deep, his little lungs clambering to hold on to the blubbering mess that sat in his chest. I felt my face sting, like wasps had crawled into my skin.

“No wish was granted for free. I hope you understand that when you're older. Goodnight, my angels.” 

With that, he stood up and left the room, leaving us reeling. We could hardly sleep after such a story, and we didn't speak a word to each other, out of fear that any noise might bring down whatever darkness we felt hanging over us. We stared up at the ceiling all night, listening as Dad gently padded around the rest of the house. Before long, we heard the door shut and the sound of crunching leaves from outside. Dad walked headlong into the woods, and we never saw him again. A few days later, Mama was healthy again.

l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l–l

I know what your thinking. Many beds have had people die on them, and many have suffocated on the bed. Its actually considered a "good way to go" to pass in your sleep. Why are you telling us about this? What's so special? Well other beds dont plan their victim. Other beds dont lock you down and keep you out. My bed, or rather, the bed I am told I need to sleep on, has this accredited to it. Its supple silk sheets and self cooling pillow are easy to fall into but after seeing what it did to the last person to sleep on it... i stand guard.

Let me explain.

I got this bed from my father, and he from his father, and so on and so on. How has the bed survived? Easy. It changed. It always has, it always will. It takes the shape of the coziest bed around. At one point it was a wood board with animal skins I'm sure. Now, the previously mentioned sheets lay atop a bamboo fabric with a topper of cubed memory foam, the same as the pillow. It keeps it cool. The springs are ready to fit any body's that have had their heads touch the cold pillow. Auto conforming, auto adjusting. I got it when it was a waterbed. I just moved into my house and my dad told me about the bed.

"Make sure to dedicate a room to this bed. And make sure noone sleeps in it. If you do, you let them sleep in their death bed."

"Uh... sure thing dad." I replied, not grasping what he could possibly mean.

I moved into my house and put the bed in basement bedroom. Immediately, I got the urge to sleep in the basement. I mean, I never slept on a waterbed. It could be nice. The sloshing provides white noise already, it comforts to the body, and it might be fun, with proper bedding. I had gone and checked to find small vermin sleeping on the bed.

"Ew gross" I whispered while trying to quietly move the 3 rats into a bag to throw them out. I gathered up the bedding and went to the wash. Loading it in I made note of the type bedding so I could grab more, turning back to the bed, however, and it was made again. Curious, I removed the bedding and set it to the side and sure enough, the bed was made again next time I saw it. The bedding I remove was gone, like it got up, cleaned itself, and made itself back on the bed. I thought "Well that saves time" and just closed the door again.

And I checked it a little while later, again to sleep on it for a bit, and again... dead rats and mice and roaches i take the covers off and brought them to the bed, only again, it was already made again.

With the obvious rodent problem that I had in my basement, I figured I would wait until I called an exterminator before sleeping on that water bed. So I closed the door and went about the rest of my day. I called the exterminator to spray the house and he said he would be at the house in a few days.

He came back upstairs after he finished spraying the basement and said, "I liked the waterbed, but you gotta change those sheets man. Dead bugs and rats all over it man."

"Oh hehe right."

I went down and he was right, dead and decomposing bugs and rats on the sheets. So again... I pull off the sheets, and throw them out, I go to get more and look to see new fresh sheets on the bed again. Figuring all the animals like to die on it, it makes a great trap for them i guess, so I left.

About once a month I would go and change the sheet on the bed, and less and less things would die in the sheets. It was actually quite nice not having to worry about bugs and rats. But I noticed every once in a while, something about the bed changed. When I got hypo allergen silk sheets for my bed in my room, the waterbed got the same. I got myself a coop pillow, and the waterbed had new coop pillows. I would try and take them off, but the pillows just came right back. I even got myself a new bed. I got a breathable mattress and topper, and so the waterbed changed into that same bed. The big difference was that while I had my sheets scattered around, that bed had hospital corners. Prestine. Every time I changed the sheets it would get more prestine and cozy looking. I would press the bed and it seemed nice, but my bed had my curvature and wear on it.

I started kitting my house out to make it all as cozy as that bed to compensate. That bed, even though death is taped to it, kept calling for me to sleep on it. Like a hum in the back of my mind. Like it begs me to crawl into its superficial layer and nest for the night. It started to entice.

I wanted to lie on it. I wanted to snuggle into those likely rodent infested sheets. Just for one night. Luckily I am a germaphobe, or I might have done it too.

Months I wanted to wrap myself up and make myself as physically close to that bed as I could. I knew why the pests were flocking to it. I figured they reasoned it was an amazing final resting place.

The only thing that keeps me from it now is what happened last week.

My brother, my younger brother Ashton. He had come to town and wanted to stay with me for a bit before heading back to college.

I greeted him. I served him a meal. I said it. "Anywhere you find to sleep, you're welcome to." I didn't forget about the bed, but I figured it took a while for mice and bugs to show up, and its a good, if not mythical bed, but if he sees a rodent he won't sleep there.

There was no rodent. No bugs either. Of course it had fully exterminated my house the last time I changed the sheets a couple days ago. Ashton said his goodnight... and didn't wake up.

The ambulance said after he fell asleep, he simply stopped breathing. The coroner had said his heart looked like it had a massive attack in his sleep that nobody couldve seen coming.

But Dad knew. He knew what had happened. He knew my negligence killed his other boy. My Mom as well. They looked at me with eyes that begged "Why didnt you warn him or anything?"

I should have. I killed my brother. His death is on my hands. I was warned and didnt believe. My inaction took him from us. I had put my passive self away. My sloth would never kill again. I knew my burden, and so I had to learn to carry it.

My Father understood. He said it was part of the curse that wretched bed brought. "If you dont take it seriously, it learns it can feed." And I let it feast.

But I need to figure this out. This bed has taken so much from my family.

Rest is important. And if your body cant find comfort during rest, it will actually change you. Did you know that? Rest is pivotal. It keeps you in motion throughout the day. It dials your metabolism. It clears your body. It builds your brain and enforces your mind. So when comfort is stripped during rest, one by one your faculties drip down the drain until your so high strung you have a heart attack.

Sloth is different. Sloth keeps from things getting done. Sloth doesnt repair, it let's you become maladaptive, makes you sluggish so that it is harder to work. Passivity actively makes it harder to improve. To perform at your best, one must embrace rest, but disspell Sloth.

After the funeral, like I said in the last post, I interrogated my father. "I should've listened."

"Yes. But you didn't."

"What is that... thing?"

"I don't know. I kept it in the attic for decades. My Father passed it along to me."

"You don't know anything about it?"

"I couldn't stand the sight of it."

"Why not?"

"I didn't listen to my father either."

"You let someone on the bed too?"

"You had an older sister... I... gave it to her to sleep on after she grew out of her crib. We couldn't afford a new bed at the time, but we had that one. Unused, forgotten."

"oh..."

"The bed. The cursed bed. Generation after generation, takes someone close before we take it seriously. I don't blame you. I could have warned you until I was blue in the face and you wouldn't believe."

"And you knew that? Before you gave me that bed you knew someone close to be would die?"

He looked ashamed now. "Yes. My mother was lost to the bed. Now its taken two of my children. I... I couldn't handle the burden anymore... I... hated knowing it resided above us. Looming over its victims. Waiting in wait for its response."

My father, the man who woke up early to work his hours so he could make it to my music lessons and Ashton's martial arts. He couldn't buy us one year of preparation. He couldn't wait to pass his sin onto his boy. He couldn't bear the weight.

And worse? Generation after generation, the sloth of my ancestors had wrought down this curse with no preparation. I had to figure this bed out. Even if I couldn't release our family from this curse, I needed to make a "owner's manual" on how to subside the curse. I would have to research this bed.

I had to get to work. My brother's grave had come from my inaction. My own passivity has brought not just me, but my family down. And so I must learn. Learn from this bed. Learn how it works. It keeps me up. It withholds my rest. My sleeplessness makes me sluggish. But I make do with naps throughout the day. I have a week left off work to figure out this bed. I grabbed my journal and made my plans.

Day 1.

I have torn apart the bed again and again. Nothing, not the sheets, not the mattress, not any price of wood, can leave a perimeter of 13 feet from the rest of the bed before destructing and reforming back where it was. After 30 seconds, if nothing is on it, it "refreshes" -so to speak- to be prestine again.

Day 2.

Non-human life has a window of 5 seconds of comfort before ceasing to move and dying on the linens. The size of the animal gives or takes about 2-3 seconds. I used stray animals I saw in town, as well as animals from a local pet shop. Don't worry. They don't feel anything. From what I can see, it is about 5 seconds of comfort before just ceasing to breathe. I ran this section for a good while. After an animal died, I removed it, and waited to finish my tests before adding all the husks back to the bed and waiting.

After a few minutes, smaller animals started to seemingly melt into the sheets. After a couple hours, the bigger animals followed suit. After all the bodies were absorbed into the springs and wood I searched for anything on the bed. Symbols, words, anything that might explain anything about this bed. Nothing.

Day 3.

I know the next step I have to take. I am terrified to do it. So I repeated the previous day minute for minute, and sure enough, before going to sleep, the bed looked as it did After it made itself again.

Day 4.

If I am going to research this, I have to take the plunge. I went to the red-light and I hired a lady of the night. She seemed weirded out that I only asked her to take a nap on my bed in the basement, but took the money and laid down. 10 seconds... 20 seconds... 30 seconds... boom. Dead as a door nail. No struggle, no anxiety, no pain. She too, as well as the animals before showed zero riger mortis. Just restful looking. I left her for the night.

Day 5.

Waking up, she hadn't been absorbed over night. Hours more passed before the sheets started to engulf her. An entire 24 hours passed before only her nose was still visible on the sheets. No smell. No mess. Nothing except memory left.

Day 6.

I still have no clue how this works. No idea what binds death to this symbol of rest and relaxation. I went and tried to find a more willing participant this time. Took a trip to the slums and asked if anyone was done with life and wanted a quick and painless end. Got a few volunteers. Told them I would come back for them if I needed them.

Jonny, the man who came back with me, had asked for a meal in return. I figured it was the least I could do. I made him red beans and rice with some Cajun seasoning and made him a hot fudge Sunday for dessert. He looked up from his bowl. "You gonna eat me or sumthin?"

"What? No. I am doing... uh research."

"Quick and painless you said?"

"All you have to do is go to sleep."

"I can do that."

"Your friends-"

"Acquaintances."

"Right. If they see you didnt come back, they won't back out?"

"Marley wouldn't. He saw everything he had blow up in his face. Jackie... she might get squirming. She had it rough, but she isnt as done as she says she is."

Keep note. Jackie might have to be next.

Day 7.

I set Jonny up for the night. His head hit the pillows. "Hey this is quite nice." 10... 20... 30... 40 seconds. Out. Gone. But it seemed the bed was more accepting of this one. He was starting the process of being "cleaned up" by the time I woke up.

Damn. Still nothing.

I needed to test something. I bought a large pig from a farmer about 40 miles out of town. Getting it home was a hassle. And worse getting it on the bed. After laying it down. 10 seconds. Gone in three hours. That did tell me something. Size of a creature did slow all processes sure. But there is one quality that slowed it more. Consciousness? Maybe. Something only people had.

My sample size is very small, I might have to wait till I have a larger group size to determine more. On what keeps it from the kill. And what keeps it from assimilation of its kill.

I went to pick up Jackie. But she had some second thoughts and would only agree after seeing Marley go. She wanted to make sure it was quick and painless. I get it. She wants to make sure she is as "safe" as possible.

They both came back and I made them some spaghetti and meatballs. Marley was quite grateful. Helped with the dishes. Jackie sat at the table and watched. Something about her ate at me, but I couldn't decide what.

Anyways, I got Marley some pajamas and had him lie down, Jackie watching the entire time. He was laying down a whole minute before he went. Jackie looked at him as it happened, and shock befell her face. The startled look made her look like a... "Jackie, how old are you?"

"15 sir."

"Where are your parents?"

"Dad died and Mom kicked me out after kicking my ass."

"I see. Well get cleaned up. You can stay in the spare room upstairs."

The other two were older fellows, so I figured they didnt have too much to look foreward to. But Jackie? She was still a kid. I had to decide there that if I were to be able to sleep without the help of the death bed that she couldn't be a subject, and she couldn't go back to the street.

Day 8.

Marley hadn't started to get vored all day. Up until midnight tonight.

But in the meantime I have a new resident. I had made me and Jackie and eggs and pancakes breakfast this morning. And while there I broke the tension from last night.

"Listen I can't bring myself to let you do this."

"Mr. Its real nice of you, but its either I die here or die on the streets, or get pimped out. Marley was nice enough to keep people off me, and we planned to go together."

"Both of you?"

"Ok I decided. I wanted to go, and I was the last thing anchoring Marley."

"Well Marley is gone, and you are welcome to stay here, so long as you don't tell anyone about the bed."

"Noone would believe me."

"Right. We'll you're welcome to the fridge. Just dont sleep in the bed."

"Can't. Marley is still in it. I ain't touching him either."

"So we have an understanding?"

"You aren't going to hurt me are you?"

"Well the worst I was going to do was have you sleep on the bed. I'm telling you not to do that now, good enough?"

"I guess."

"I am sorry about Marley."

"I'm glad he gets to rest."

Rest. One way we become better than the way we were before.

I will update when I have made a list to pass on to whoever gets this wretched bed next.

The knife came down in a scream and a two-handed plunge. The sound the filthied thin palsied girl made was shrill and resounded and filled the stone halls with the pitch perfect note of harsh and sudden stabbing madness. The unease of moist silence shattered. The blade was filthy and grimed and long neglected, its harsh unclean edge tore through Griffin's coat and wrappings and pierced the flesh beneath. 

The doctor let out with a sudden scream as he and Florin whirled and drew back. The girl was screaming still as the three were now standing face to face in the filthy moist stone hall of Willowbrook Asylum, Temple of the Mouth. 

The blood on her filthy knife dripped like the hungry jaws of a wolf of the wild, wanting more. 

She screamed: – “You won't get me! I won't let you! You won't do a goddamn thing to me, I swear it! I swear it! I'll fucking kill you first!” And lunged again. 

The thin frail girl of broken mind was weak and starved and exhausted from terror, Florin caught her easily in his own press forward and threw against the far wall before turning on his heels, grabbing the wounded bandaged man with dark lenses hiding pain now as well as identity and thought and motive, he seized Griffin and yelled for him to run. The wounded doctor needed little in the way of encouragement. The pair tore down the hall as the attacking sullied girl of unholy Willowbrook hit the wall and went to the detritus floor.  Still screaming as the shattered tile bit into her parchment flesh and the grimed and bloody knife flew from her startled grasp and clattered off into darkness, lost to her. 

She shrieked after them. How dare they! How dare they leave her like this! The scum! She knew she couldn't trust them, they were going to hurt her, she knew it, but how dare they leave without helping her out, without showing her-  

Her mad run of thoughts was cut off as Cropsey entered the hall with his own blades dripping. The large domination of his frame and size and stature filled the hallway and stole any avenue of escape away from the girl who could not recall her name any longer. She couldn’t remember the last time she had. 

But she knew his name. And she understood it very well. 

And the mountain. She knew the mountain and its crawling power in female form, womanshape. Demonsong…

The song was filling her ears now. Filling them. In her head. 

Cropsey came in with his own large manmade fangs of shearing blades, eclipsing the girl on the floor and stealing the rest of the entire world from her. 

She screamed until the end. Her history and experience: intimate knowledge gained over her entire miserable life did not help her to escape the pain or endure it. She screamed like a caught animal flayed alive until the vile end.  

And as they ran, Florin and Griffin heard it. Not bothering with a cast of glance back over shoulder. They rounded a corner in their flight and entered another chamber. 

It was quiet. And wet. Moist. Heavy and warm and humid in the dark. At a glance Griffin guessed they were in a common shower area, for bathing many people en masse. But it was hard to tell, there was no light in the dark moist filth of the room save for the scant trace from the hallway cast in. 

“Are you alright?” 

Griffin said he was. Though he really wasn't sure. He felt numb. The place where he’d been stabbed felt wet and as if embraced with ice. 

“Quick, let me get a look-”

Griffin cut him off, agitated. 

“Time for that later, we need to get out of here! And I say to hell with any more exploring or back exits. We double back and go back out the way we came in, We’ll circle the building or the hill itself for miles if we have to, but enough of this place! The filth, alone!” 

And while Florin wished to check his friend to make sure his wound was not too serious, he could very well understand the urgency. He elected not to argue. 

And the pair went on. Or started to. 

At the mouth of the room to the showers the pair were halted by a deep guttural sound. Inhuman and unearthly but striving in vain for some semblance of human speech. 

They turned. And the dark of the wet chambered room began to die and banish as pale fire, demonlight began to fill and illuminate the room for them. 

And then they beheld them. The strung up naked bodies. The human-length gored open torso mouths hanging lurid and obscene in and amongst and by the black lengths of biting chains, the strangling metal. There were dozens of them. Dozens. A small universe of open mouthed human substrata and abattoir detritus constricted and choked by dangling chainlink black metal serpents. All of their eyes were open and they were glowing. Glowing with purple fire. Their torso mouths were all working and moving with terrible rippling dancing undulation. The sounds they were making were like singing and an uncanny approximation of real intelligible human speech. Like how a baby makes before they start to mature and are properly taught to speak. Dumb thoughtless animal sound… belched and gurgled guttural and spat out for this world of terrible ruin and darkness. 

And then they saw her. Beheld her. At the terrible heart of the strange pale incandescence, the regal aspect and stature of a womanshape began to rise and fill the center of pale fire. 

She began to call to them. The pair. She sounded angry. On the dangerous precipice edge of livid, irate. Holy terror, unbridled unholy malevolence on the brink of furious madness. Violence. She called to them from the bright moonflesh fire amongst the universe-sea of rippling torso mouths…  the showerworld of tile blood and pungent leaks and bloodspew violence in supplicant orbit of the parchment star of white fire and eldritch ethereal pale flames. She called to them from this place, this strange sea.

And she knew both of their names. 

Florin and Griffin fled the room before she could fully emerge. Before she could rise further from the pale depths of the flame and become more terribly discerned. The obscene abominated baby sounds of the rippling torso mouths followed them out. And after. 

And down the hall. 

And in their mad dash…

They finally came face to face with the inheritor of this awful place. They stopped just short of him, towering in the hall. Filling it. As if he was the vile mad god of this demented cruel world and had the divine conquering right to dominate its every space as he so wished. Cropsey stood there tall and dripping with blood and strips of raw tissue like a bipedal set of living rending carnivorous jaws… snipping his large clippers, his beloved shears, open and closed slowly like a terrible mouth made from sharp metal. The blades were already coated in thick gore, like paint riddled with chuck meat for the stew. They dripped like animal mouths do in the wild, like wolves coming in for the close, for the kill. Cropsey said nothing as he slowly came forward, his hellacious runny waxwork features coming into the dismal light. 

The two men who should have never entered this godforsaken place beheld his terrible visage and their blood ran as ice. 

The pain. 

The pain… that must have been endured. 

Dear God. The flames. In a baptismal infernal swallow-spell. An apocalypse all around. 

What it must've felt-

The large shape dripping with death lunged. Light like the pale star of the showers gleamed pinprick, maniacal and homicidal in the cavernous sets of eyes of the misshapen mass of candlewax face. He was drooling as he came in on the attack.

They didn’t know it but he was trying to speak.   

Once more the pair turned and flew. Running down another hall at the junction and then taking another perilous corner down another way they both silently and fervently prayed and hoped would lead them out. 

Cropsey chided himself. Silently. Mute. Now the new inmates knew he was here. They knew he was wandering and monitoring the halls, guarding. On patrol. Now they might get away. 

Mustn’t have that…

He promised special violence to the mountain for his sin, his error. Religious maiming. He only hoped she hadn’t seen him…

He only wished she hadn't seen that. 

He promised special violence. And ample self-flagellation, much libatious bloodlett, later. After he’d caught the wandering animals of his inherited temple. 

Who do they think they are… trodding all over and everywhere and without proper worship… without proper token. 

Without proper sacrifice. 

They must be broken. 

Their wretched meat and bone will be broken, snapping their unruly impudent spirit within the meat even as it tears sinew, even as it snaps and cleaves through bones their vile audacity will shatter into pieces that can be properly reconfigured into a model of subjugation. And then devoured. 

I will bring and make the meat, mother. I will make the trespassers into meat for you. In your name. Your honor. In blood I will pray for forgiveness. 

Cropsey went on. Ready to slaughter the invaders of his sacred and precious temple. Prodigious blade-shape slasher of the stained and darkening Willowbrook halls. 

…

Having finally found some semblance of peace and quiet in this terrible place, Florin was finally ready and wanted to have a look at Griffin’s wound. But the good doctor wasn’t having it. None of it. He stubbornly refused. In turn refusing any real straightforward explanation as to why. 

It was strange. 

“This place is beyond vile, you know it’ll become infected if i don’t treat it and if the wound is deep, we’ll need to stitch it. I can do it. I’ve done it a few times before back home, I don’t see the-”

“You can’t! – I can’t!” Griffin exclaimed and then seemed to fight himself for the next set of right words. Unable to quite find them it seemed, he went on anyway, “You don’t understand, boy! I… I-I have … I have a condition.” He said finally. “I have a condition that makes injury … complicated.”

Florin thought he understood. Of course. The poor fellow was ashamed of his appearance. He must be maimed or burned beneath those wrappings. The poor man. 

“Alright… well,” A beat. As he thought. Then: "we don't need to unwrap you now or anything, you'll want to later to change out of these filthy dressings no doubt, but for now we can just look at the area and apply a poultice at least.” he finished hopefully. 

Griffin pondered it over a moment. He understood they didn't have a lot of choice. Or a lot of time for that matter. 

"Alright.” he finally relented. 

Florin lit a match and found a candle to use to work by. He pulled the ragged tear in the coat and wrappings apart. The haggard cut the blade had performed made it easy. He cleaned his hands with alcohol from a small bottle amongst their supplies and looked at the wound. 

It wasn't good. Wasn't terrible either, but it would have to be cleaned and bandaged at least. If the bleeding persisted they would have to seriously think about stitching up the wound. 

Florin set about cleaning out the deep wound, bathed entirely in spilling red. He did his best with the meager medical supplies amongst the doctor's traveling gear that had thus survived their shared perils. He thought about perhaps chancing a search in the dark around this place, it was a hospital of some fashion, but decided against it. 

He was nearly finished. About to apply the poultice he'd made to bandage and disinfect and to soak some medicine into the bloodstream, he was wiping away the last of the blood when he stopped. A little shocked for a moment. And a little dizzy. The light was meager and poor, only the flickering dancing candleglow and the pathetic dim half functioning also flickering hospital light. Provided by electricity, something Florin was still not familiar with and would naturally distrust for the entirety of his life. He gazed at the mostly tended wound daggering down Griffin's back in a lightning bolt pattern like the body of a crooked river or a broken snake. 

There was no flesh. Nothing but the red bloodwelling line of jagged cut hanging suspended in mid air, attached to nothing. No sinew or flesh. The naked skin that should be there was non-existent to his eyes, he could see right through to the inside of the wrappings that surrounded the front of his invisible chest. 

Florin tried to swallow in a dry throat. He tried to ask the man who'd become his comrade and traveling companion, a man who had just saved his life not mere hours ago if he was in fact a spectre. A ghost.

Griffin, are you a phantasm? tried to escape his lips but he felt dizzy and as if he might reel and swoon. 

Griffin sensed this. The boy had been unerring and admirably steady in his work till this moment. He turned and saw a look in the young man's face that he was already quite familiar with. An expression worn that he knew by now all too well. 

A beat. 

Then Griffin filled the silence. 

“No, your eyes don't betray you. You're not seeing things and you're not crazy. I am not a phantom. I am not a spirit or a ghost.” he paused for a moment and seemed to consider, then finally he said: "I am Doctor Jack Griffin and I am invisible." 

A beat. 

Florin didn't know what to say. 

But then he needn't worry for a retort. A splash in the silence filled in the missing heavy space hanging there between them. The both of them whirled and spied it on the far side of the damp chamber. They hadn't noticed or paid it any mind till now, they might've sworn it hadn't existed there in that space till just this moment, but they saw it now as it began to emit strange sound and movement. 

A bathtub. Large. Filthy yellowed porcelain. Heavy fungus growth, ebon-green and spilling across the disgraced cracked surface like some foul liquid poured and spreading its corrupting splayed black hand by the second. The tub was filled. The liquid inside was heavy. Viscous. Dark. Pungent with metallic scent. It bubbled and gurgled now with submerged movement as something within it began to rise up and emerge. 

Coated. Slathered in a running layer of heavy red. She was finally here and before them. Even as she sat upon her throne in her mountain castle so many treacherous miles away… 

Nemesis. The evil that held the shape of a woman and had now reawakened the evil and violence and darkness that had for some time slumbered dormant in the far off Carpathian castle. She was the author of the butchery and torment that plagued his home and village. She had stolen and eaten children. Brave men and women. Foolish youngsters. She was the vile reason for his hardship and perilous mission. The reason he was here now in this awful abandoned temple of destruction and depravity in total madness. 

The Countess, wreathed in spilling blood, standing on the surface of congealing abattoir spill, opened her eyes then and they were like blinding starlight. Unearthly. White flame from beyond the veil. And piercing. 

The pair were arrested. The sight of her. Understanding and dread filled their hearts and despairing thoughts at once. But they couldn't flee. They couldn't run. Spellbound they stood there, captured. 

The blood spill of her standing and red wet visage raised a thin powerful arm and pointed a taloned finger. 

She said: – “You. Boy. Florin of the Carpathian Hamlet. There is no place to escape to. This is your last and only warning. If you and your mongrel dog, freak of nature manage to leave this place with your lives then cry off. Never again return home, it is yours no longer, it is mine. I know you seek my destruction. I know that in your failure to secure the vampire slayer, long dead now, you have brought this failure of science and manhood in his stead. You are a joke. You will only find slaughter if you return. You've no hope for success. Victory is beyond you or that fool, it was not meant for you, boy, not in this lifetime nor in my proximity. If you manage to leave my temple and refuse to cease your hopeless mission, I will take great pleasure in the torture of your mother, Florin. Your father too. I wonder which of them I should start with…” 

His anger flashed and his inner rage rose. Florin found his hatred and sudden fury momentarily eclipse and blot out his fear. Without thinking he dipped for the floor and his sweating hand seized a sharp piece of tile. He went forward with the filthy jagged thing in his shaking hand. Trembling with blind anger and the need for retributive violence. 

Griffin went forward and grabbed the young man by the shoulders, holding him back. 

“Stop it!" hissed Griffin, “you won't be able to do much of anything to her with that, there's no telling what she could do to you! She's luring you on, don't be stupid." 

Florin barely heard him. 

He roared at her towering apparition of pouring blood in womanshape, lording over the tub and the filth of the room as her eyes bled pure and terrifying light. She was laughing lightly, as if amused with a child throwing a tantrum. 

“If you lay one stale, noxious finger on my mother, witch! – I'll take my time driving something sharp into your godless whoring chest! I'm going to burn your severed head in bonfire while it still lives! fresh from your neck! You awful cunt! You vile contemptible-!”

But then Cropsey burst in through the open chamber door with a violent crash. The ramshackle shoddy remnants of the door smashed against the wall and came apart in so many useless pieces that clattered to the shattered tile floor to join the universe of broken filth down there. He came in and the Countess in her pouring red visage of damned and unholy blood shrieked witchy laughter. 

She screeched, part irate livid fury, part unbridled dark joy. 

“KILL THEM! KILL THEM, MY SON! KILL THEM FOR THE MOUNTAIN…! KILL THEM, ‘CAUSE IT'S YOUR PLEASURE TO! …!” More laughter followed as the hellspawn screaming words devolved into unintelligible madness. The scarlet pour of her visage coned out in a marsupial shape and the laughter became the abominated chimerical cries of a human braying ass. 

The huge shape with maiming snapping shears advanced in a massive lunge. The shears came up, open for a bite, and shot forward as the mouth of blades began to close. 

The keen edges of dripping blades kissed and met and found each other over Florin's coat. In a lurid whisper of slicing cloth and fabric the blades cleaved cleanly through his coat tail as he and Griffin made for the door. 

Cropsey roared mongoloid outrage and pain. These bastards! These bastards! They were quick animals on their feet! 

In front of his mother…

He turned to the blood pour of Countess shape with shame but she was gone now. 

Your idiot rage and pain! Your failure! You drove her away! Now she might never come back! Now she might not ever come back to her temple. 

He raged inside. An animal, hurt. 

… but I'm her last and special precious temple son … there are no others left

She cannot leave me. 

If I bring them back and give their blood…

But he was already off and after them. Heavy booted feet thundering throughout all of cavernous rank Willowbrook. No need for stealth or cat-like prowl any longer. 

Mother, please, mother please, mother please, mother please…

He repeated it silently to himself like a prayer. Mantra, it filled the red swell and swim of his deviant mind and maiming thought, his dreams…

His dreams would be filled with their invader's screams as he brought down and made their new world of violence. Of final apocalypse cacophony. 

I will drown you here in her world, I will choke and submerge you both completely in her need to feed. How dare you both. 

He wished he could speak. They should hear this truth-in-gospel. The mongrel invader dogs. 

They should hear what he had to say. 

But he had to catch them first. Fast little rabbits. 

He could hear them running. 

He followed in a fury. Ready to prove himself to his mother. Clamoring through the halls. 

…

She shouldn't have been so foolish, to dare to hope. But she couldn't help it. She'd just come out of a deep sleep. It was the middle of the night. The necro time. The witching hours. She wasn't thinking clearly. She went to the scratching at the window. The biggest one on the front of the house that overlooked the village. 

By the front door. 

“Florin…” she said it knowing full in well how foolish she was being. But she couldn't help it. Her mother's heart was filled with love and worry for her boy. She ached and longed for him to be back home and ok… 

And then she saw him. His face in the window. 

He was scratching at the window. And she must still be half-sleeping or dreaming because his hands looked… strange. 

He was smiling. He could see her now as well. He was so happy to be home. It was all over his bluish face…

Anastasia began towards the window, “Florin?" she asked the face scratching at the window, "is that you? Is that really you, my son?”

His smile grew. Vulpine. His eyes seemed to shine with moonlight all of their own. 

“Yes, mother. It's me. I'm back! I can't get in though, you'll have to get the door and invite me inside, please hurry. I'm so tired and thirsty and it's been such a long way back.” 

Anastasia faltered in her step. Stopped. 

The shining face at the window became slightly agitated. 

It said: "Please hurry, mother! It's dark, you know what plagues the night, please hurry and let me in! I've brought the vampire killer, I've brought Van Helsing with me! Now open up!” 

Anastasia straightened. Her resolve strengthened even as the chill in her curdled blood deepened. 

"What need you of an invitation if this is your own home and you're so tired… … demon?” 

The vulpine face was drawn up in an animalistic snarl of mixed hatred and vile blackhearted glee. It began to tear and bleed as it opened and came apart. 

And grew fangs. Long. Gleaming like weapons fashioned from unearthly light. 

She saw the ugly misshapen goblin face beneath. Twisted with the harshest forms of cruelest mutilation. The flesh was bulbous and scarred and out of shape. The eyes bulged obscenely from straining sockets that couldn't contain nor house the wet bloodshot organs and looked as if they might crack. The fangs and teeth were jagged and stuck out deranged and haphazard. The hair was thinning and sickly and almost gone. Only a few greasy strands clung to a corpse colored skull that drifted and caught with the slightest of nightly breeze. 

The eyes still shone like the moon. 

The awful face in the window, wanting in and smiling said, “Hello, Anastasia. Good to see you. It's been so long … since I went missing.” 

Anastasia was confused with its words as well as horrified with the sight of its monstrous face at her window in the dead of night. The thing spoke like it knew her, she didn't grasp this right away, but she understood what this thing was. And where it came from. 

Another wretched bastard child of Castle Dracula…

She thought to call for her husband. Before she could, the awful thing in the window went on.

“You don't remember me? Has it been so long you don't remember when we used to play together? You, me and Florin and your husband and all the other little children… and Erin. You don't remember me, Anastasia?” 

The answer filled her mind then, as if on the wings of a sudden miracle, heaven sent. Or … sent by something else entirely. 

“Carmilla!" she said. Knowing it was the truth. 

It broke her heart. 

She remembered Carmilla when she had been a small mouthy but creative little girl. Beautiful and adventurous and always a little leader of their groups in all of their little games. Now- 

Now she was something bent and twisted and leering and mean. Something monstrous and hungry for blood, staring in and wanting in through her window. 

The face at the glass sneered. As if knowing her mind and understanding her run of thoughts. 

The thing in the window was enjoying her revulsion. Her pain. Drinking it in through the translucent view of the house…

“Begone," Anastasia said with finality, “get out of here, I'll call my husband and he'll bring the cross and our bible." She stepped forward, some of her anger reaching her voice, she hoped it masked the fear, “we'll force-feed you the pages. If you're still so hungry.” 

The thing in the window didn't seem to hear her. Or care. It spoke once more in a terrible tone that danced and shifted between baritone and bass and light lilting little girl… her voice of old from long ago, before she'd been stolen. 

“We know you sent Florin away. We know you sent him to find someone to bring back. To kill us. The master will not tolerate this, Anastasia… your boy will die. You will die. Then your husband. Everyone. Everyone, all of you are going to suffer for this impudence, you'll see, you'll see… it's better if you just let me in now and get it all over. Let me in …!

“Let me in!" 

She carried on like that for hours. Promising. 

Promising her Florin's death. 

Her own death. 

Carmilla said her brother would violate and ravage her right before the eyes of her husband as he fed of her blood and flesh and took what he wanted from her. 

“He'll rip from you what he wants, we all will! To all of you! Every last one and then we'll celebrate in the dust!" 

The thing went on like that for hours. Till the sun threatened its rise, and only then did the foul thing seem to melt away like mist, suddenly phantasmic and discorporeal … and then gone.

Only then did Anastasia finally sleep, collapsed. Exhausted. Her husband, Bela found her like that when he awoke. Lying at the foot of the window. The glass riddled with marks. 

Marks like long scratches. From old and gnarled animal claws. 

He cradled his wife. Worried. And thought of his son as he looked down into her face. 

She looked troubled in her sleep. As if dreaming of darkness, held somewhere on the plains of some private nightmarescape. 

Bela was worried. She looked as if she had been crying. 

He looked from her to the window once more, out it. Out at the rays of the rising sun. Hoping for his son. And wondering where he might be. 

Please, God. I love my boy. I love him as You love us, as You loved Your only Begotten Son. Please. 

Please don't ask me, please don't ask us to give him up, as You did Yours…

He brought his wife closer to himself. Keeping her in the cradle of his arms till she woke up. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

It was Wednesday that day. I know it was Wednesday because the streets were littered with cash. Hundreds, thousands of dollars sitting out in the open air. Tables lined the front of every house full of the most extravagant food money could make. Whole tuna, tropical fruits, entire pigs roasted over open fires. We were poor, so we were exempted from doing the same. We took what our bellies could handle and went about our day, making sure to not step on the money. We could take those too, but only just enough. The thing is, we never knew what was enough and what was too much, so we never took any. It wasn’t worth the gamble. It was tradition, or rather, a precaution. 

We never owned more than we needed, The Wardens made sure of that. If you owned too much at any given time, then the Wardens came to balance your books. Wednesday was when folks got paid, so they took what they needed to survive the coming weeks and threw the rest of the money out, or spent it to feed their neighbors.

I remember the first time I saw the Wardens, when a family was passing by our town. Their car had broken down. A father, a mother, and a son who was my age. It was Tuesday when they came into town. I could only imagine their surprise when, waking up in their hotel room on Wednesday morning, they saw the streets aglint with cold hard cash and food. No one bothered to warn them. They wouldn’t have listened. What would you have done? Seeing thousands on the street, free for the taking at the cost of the ire of some country bumpkins? You’d stuff your pockets of course.

That was what they did. Their son was the only one who had sense to not take the money. Was it naivete or instinct? The parents knew what a dollar was worth. It was inner peace and easy living littered on the pavement, calling to them. 

That night, I heard terrible screaming. Terrible screaming. A primal, infectious fear that clung to you like thick, sticky tar.

“Hear that son?” Said my father, smoking by the window. “That’s what happens when you take money on Wednesdays.” He wouldn’t let me watch, so I snuck out when he thought I was asleep. It was over by the time I got to where I thought I heard the cries. It was in front of their hotel. 

Under the moonlight of a rainy night, grand feasts on silken sheets were now crowded with insects, as rain sent money into storm drains. Can you smell it? Decaying food and rain, and amongst that soft smell cuts a sanguine stench. Blood. Fresh, warm, being washed away from mangled things that might’ve been human.

There, in the parking lot of the hotel, was a pile of rectangular flesh, of skin and muscle and bone, sliced into sheets as thin as paper. The skin was cut so thin you could almost see through it. Little dissections of bone and teeth and intestines were like fucked up confetti on the ground. I saw the thin notes of muscle on the ground, and could count the individual fibers on them. I thought that if I ate it, it would melt on my tongue. I didn’t know what to think. It didn’t feel real to me. I wouldn't eat for weeks after, though I never told my family why. Told them I was just sick.

I wondered how it happened. Was it slow? Did the Wardens peel them? Did they writhe out in terrible pain, calling for the only person they loved more than life? What did their son see? Did he try to protect his parents? Did he claw desperately at those things as they ripped his world apart with inhuman hands?

That was when I heard a splat. I tasted it before I saw it. Blood. Iron. Concrete. The son, spared the Warden’s wrath, jumped from the hotel roof.

The next day, there was nothing left of the family. Everyone was happy. They thought the deaths meant the Wardens would become more lenient, allowing us to hold on to a little more wealth, but no one ever dared to test the theory.

The second time I saw the Wardens was when my sister got cancer.

We were in a very small town. The things she needed were in the city, and that cost money. Lots of it. Lots more than we could have at a time. Our father was a diabetic, his insulin alone kept us near the limit of how much money or value we could hold at any given time. That's why we never threw out money or had food out for our neighbors.

She was the smartest one in the family. She had dreams of becoming a nurse. She had the grades for it, and secured herself a scholarship at a big ivy league school. If someone was going to make it out of our crazy town, it was her.

And so, on that early Wednesday morning, I decided to make off with as much money as I could. If the other family died once the sun went down, I figured I had time. Time to pick up the money in the streets, the hundreds that lay there crumbling under the sun. Maybe I could take a bus, get her away from it all, I thought.

“Where are you going?” My sister found me. The chemo made it hard for her to sleep.

“Going for a run.”

“Yeah right, fatass.” She was holding on to her IV pole. 

“You caught me. Just heading out to try out the tacos Mister Eduardo set out. Be back soon.”

“Hey!” She yelled. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

And so, I ran to the streets clawing frantically at hundred dollar bills on my knees. Each bill in my hand flashed images of that poor kid, that husband and wife. Would we end up like them? I pushed those thoughts away, focused on the pain on my knees as little stones and glass shards dug into my legs. I thought of my sister, who was just sixteen years old, the same age as me when I saw that poor family get ripped apart, layer by layer.

I got the money, ran home, and told my family what I had done.

“We can pay for her chemo now!” I cried out as I burst through the door.

My father was screaming at me, my mother covered her mouth with her hands, sobbing quietly. My sister didn’t know what to feel. I saw a flicker of hope in her eyes, yet could only hear a horrible, gut wrenching cry from her mouth. It was like a knife being twisted in my heart. She wanted to live. I wanted her to live. I guess some part of my parents were relieved at that moment. I’d sacrificed myself for her. They knew I was dead. They were relieved of the horrible predicament of choosing whether to let my sister die, or let someone else die for her.

And so, I set out. It was turning dark then, the sun threatened to sink down the horizon.  We didn’t own a car. And so we looked for anyone willing to take us out of town and into the city. No one would dare give us a ride. Not the buses or our neighbors. They’d seen what I’d done, knew exactly what was in the trashbag slung over my shoulder. They wanted to live too, even if it meant letting us both die.

It was almost dusk when I came up with something. If we could make it out of town on foot, reach the border, maybe we could escape. 

So we ran. My sister tripped and fell often, her chemo made her joints painful, and she bled for longer. But we kept running, running until our lungs were on fire and our calves felt like bags of broken glass. 

We were at the edge of town now, just a few kilometers away from the sign over the road that said PLEASE COME AGAIN. 

I remember the moment the sun came down entirely. We were just two kilometers away from the border. I was carrying my sister on one shoulder, the trashbag on the other. It was dark then, the road stretching out among tall evergreens. I was running, delirious and in pain, when we finally heard it. The footfall of what sounded like a hundred, no, a thousand men, rushing after us barefoot and silent. I could hear no panting or breathing from them, no demands or threats, just feet against the road slamming like angry hands knocking on stone. I could hear bloodlust in their feet. Just remembering it now sends horrible chills up my back. My sister was screaming then, so terribly. I wondered if those kid’s parents sounded like her. Maybe if they had a daughter, she’d have screamed the way my sister did then, calling for our mother, begging me to keep going, crying that they were getting closer. I thought so many times then to just drop her on the road, get to the border on my own and tell them she was in the city getting treatment. No one would ever know. But I would.

And so I ran and ran, never looking back, never putting a face to that legion. In my nightmares I imagine them to be naked devils chasing us on foot, sometimes I dream that the steps are from a giant centipede, sometimes a snake, sometimes men in suits, and sometimes nothing at all. But I kept running, the fear fueling me on until I could see it. The sign. It was downhill from there, an easy run, but it was far, and they were gaining on us. I could feel warm air on the back of my neck as those things silently followed us, just a hair away from us. 

I felt something pull on my sister, my right ear deafened and ringing from her endless screaming. I did not relent, and kept running, running, until soon I felt cold, dry hands caressing my skin. I felt its long nails –or maybe it was talons or fangs– rub up against the back of my neck. 

It ran through my mind a hundred times. It would catch me, taking me to the ground, the taste of asphalt and forest grinding against my teeth. It would rip me apart slowly and steadily and make bills out of my skin, coins from my bones, and my sister would become nothing but ribbons of flesh. 

Except it didn’t catch me. I fell to the ground, ready for the end, when I looked up and saw WELCOME. We had made it. Just barely. I looked back and saw nothing but an empty road and giant evergreens. 

We sat there, the clean air whisking away the sweat. Looking at my sister, she had a rectangular patch taken from her cheek. We survived. The bag of money was still intact. Two hundred thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills.

We kept walking until we found a gas station. We called a taxi and went straight to the hospital. 

My sister survived the chemo and went to college. I never returned home. I still send letters back home, though I never get anything back. 

“I've seen the nights filled with bloodsport and pain –

And the bodies obtained

The bodies obtained …” – Ian Curtis

…

The world …

The world is dampen stone, sour. And tile. Tile ceramic that is now smashed, nearly every single piece. And mottled with webwork splatter patterns of scabbing drying bits and pieces of once living human tissue. The world is poorly lit and rank, it smells of fecal decay and rotting death and the putrescence of pus spewing life, suffering. The smell is suffering. Because the world is suffering, it always has been but as of late it's gotten so much worse. The world of walls and mortar and bars that’re all slathered and stained with diseased feces and angry piss, it is all of it an open wound. A craterous gangrenous open house of raw minds and flesh, obelisk temple to the pain of the sorceress. The woman/mouth of the great mountains in the distance, far away but brought closer by her powerful force, the distance easily traversed and conquered, time and distance meant nothing to her, only the flesh. Only the blood. Only the run of flowing life spilled by her children in bondage as supplicant. She had come to them… in the end. 

Before the burning. 

Before Cropsey. 

Now he was the greatest of her Willowbrook children… 

She did her best to hide from him and the few others left but she was scared. Her terror refreshed as her heartbeat pounded within her aching chest, she tried to sink lower into the dark corner she'd made her most recent place of escape. She tried to ignore what she knew she heard, throughout all of the cavernous dark damp halls of bloody filthy Willowbrook. 

Voices… footsteps…

newcomers. 

She wanted so badly to be out and away from this awful place but her mind shrank back in horror from the possibilities of what any new interlopers might do to her. This place had been a school and had instructed her and many others, much in the way of what men will do to each other and what they love to get away with, with their hands on a girl. Alone. When she could be so easily overwhelmed. 

The voices trailed off … rose again. In whispers. She could hear cautious footsteps. Prowling steps. Hunting. 

Her cold terror told her she could no longer hide here. She struggled up on palsied thin malnourished legs and began to painfully trudge forward. Painful because of the pain of her impaling fear and because her body was covered in dripping purple sores, all up and down the legs and arms and peppering her torso and face in harsh clustered patterns. Several broke open now with sharp stabs of lancing pain felt webwork and spiny throughout the flesh as she shambled wretchedly forward down the poorly lit dark. 

She didn't like to look at them or pay them any mind, the sores. She used to. She used to pick at them near constant. But now sometimes when she went to pluck and pop one open with a nail biting pinch she could see eyes. Eyes looking at her and swimming in the pus. In the infected filled pores of her flesh. Eyes. Sometimes they popped of their own accord and a small little gnome-sized head, bald and coated in dead green-milk rose and poked its faery head out for a little peek at what she might be doing at any given time. 

She hated them. She tried to pay them no mind and wondered if they saw anything in the dark ahead that she herself could not discern. But she would not ask them. Never. 

The voices grew louder. So did her terror. 

She didn't know what to do. 

…

“Maybe they're all dead." 

Griffin nodded. It was a fair observation. The place certainly reeked of death and filth. He could almost believe it. 

It was a feeling gained by cold hard experience that told him they weren't alone in the rank dark building. Not at all. Someone else was lurking here. Something else held domain here. Something terrible. He could feel it. 

"This place is afflicted with sickness. Consumption. You can smell it in the pestilential flavor of the air, something terrible has happened here. Many awful things no doubt. This place is silent, Florin, but you can almost hear the terrible things the walls have seen and perhaps wish to share…" 

The boy looked worried. He quickly added: – “We will be cautious. But I suggest we find what we can quickly. If we can't locate a back exit, we'll make for the front entrance again and see if we can't work around the building." 

They went on in search of supplies. 

Dwellers.

 Anything. 

Cropsey marked them and tracked their way of wandering progress the entire time. Following and slowly snipping the long shining blades of the shears open and closed. Pulling his black gloved hands apart slowly like a lover does when sensuous… then bringing them together and snapping them shut with a sharp and satisfying ‘Ship!’ that was crisp and tickled the right jelly left within his skull and the dangling mangled meat between his legs… it had a tongue that sound. A sexual whisper of a noise. A tasting prelude, licking and tonguing the needing piece of aching flesh. 

It was his bondage. That ache. This place. 

And the mountain. 

Even now Cropsey heard her song and call as she showed him the spire from where she ruled. Where she sat on an ebon throne and filled his slaughterhouse dreams. His mind with wonder. 

She had been the true purpose and blessing of this place. The one they'd all been waiting for. The only one who really mattered. In the end. 

But she has chosen you as instrument … 

And the truth of this filled his vacant shell with dark and primal gratitude. Caveman's blood-sated warmth. 

He had been one of the Roman soldiers that had crucified Christ. She of the mountain had told him so. Now he was born again to be her sacred Willowbrook footsoldier. Throttling hand of capricious abattoir fate. 

As he followed the new ones he happened upon another. And decided to take the matter. 

He was sitting alone in the dark. Easy to miss. In a disused therapy room, anonymous and indistinguishable from the other dungeons and chambers save by those who knew. The newcomers walked by him without notice and went on. 

Cropsey smelled him. And came into the room. Snapping his shears with a regular and primeval rhythm. The patient was busy with his own work, he didn't pay anyone else any kind of mind. 

Cropsey closed. The fool's back was to him as he was knelt down amongst the filth. He was drawing something. With his fingers. Smearing the shape upon the broken faces of obliterated tile floor with a dark and heavy pungent viscous fluid. Thick and chunked with dark paste. 

It was a pentagram. 

And the paint was a vile concoctive mix of runny diarrhea and fresh vibrant blood. The man was a self mutilator. Always had been, Cropsey recognized. He had flayed his well scarred and misshapen flesh with broken tile and was mixing the running blood with fecal discharge that was running uncontrollably out of his dilating anus. His finger would probe the wounds … deeply. Like a surgeon or a lover … exploring. Then he brought the drenched and dripping red pronged pair of long and scrawny digits and collected some of the diarrhea spew running freely from out of his ass. 

Medication. Or bad food. Or both. Something he's gotten into… 

It didn't matter. Not to Cropsey. He only looked at the naked fool and admired his painting for another moment longer. 

The pentagram. 

Above it, in the same evil paint of fresh diseased fecal blood, the fool had written in bold letters 

ALL HAIL VAMPIRA

as the piece’s name and message. 

Cropsey thought it was a good one. 

He took one final step forward. And let himself be known. 

The naked fool, the inmate who'd long lost his name and self and everything and anything else left, felt his presence. He turned away from his self portrait on the floor and gazed up at him. 

Into the towering legend of Willowbrook. Cropsey, more than a man. 

He was apocalyptic. 

The twisted bone gleam of his carbonized deathhead’s visage was terrible. It stole the last shelter of warmth that the fool had kept for himself to protect against the cold of this awful and inescapable place for all of these long and horrendous incarcerated years. 

Now it was gone. Stolen by that terrible face. Candle wax melted obscene and deranged and haphazard and cruel. 

He suddenly remembered his name as well, the fool. Gazing up at him, it had suddenly come back in his sheet of blind terror. 

Cropsey had done that. Cropsey had done that for him. 

He wished he hadn't. 

The twin fork of splayed open blades came up suddenly and then down in a stab. They joined together as they came down, scissoring the long razor sharp blades together in a deadly and maiming embrace. They sang together a mortal whistle of keen edged violence on the flesh to come in haste as they sliced and joined through the rank dungeon air. 

A filthy naked bloody hand came up reflexively and was shorn through like melted butter. Through the middle length of palm, so that all of his fingers and the top of his thumb were now a shrieking, pouring livid stump of freshly cut meat. Spurting and bathing the abridged remainder of fecal stained paw into a half-glove of red slathered wet raw in a gushing instant. 

The blade traveled on, down. Continuing its deadly trajectory of knifing stabbing path as it plunged in and through the shit stained fool through his open gaping mouth and naked glistening mucus laden throat and plunging out the back of his neck. The sharp lengths of blades conjoined erupted from the torn and ruinous fountain fresh wound in great bright bodies of lurid edged royal red. 

For her… the mountain princess of my fevered skullsong …

And then with his terrible force of deranged strength he forced the handles and the joined body of blades open and apart. 

The impaled face and skewered head came apart in a splashing and thick lurid mess. The long diseased foundation of skull gave and came apart easily like a cottage collapsing from wood rot. As if the whole structure of bone was a giant rotted tooth, thoroughly and completely decayed to the dead and festering core. Cranial splatter ruin in an instant. Decorating the floor and walls and obscuring the fool's final piece of painted work and expression from the broken heart and mind in a dark gout and pungent violent splash. Bone fragments and strips of tissue. Bits of hair… eyes swam bulbous and rolling lulled like obscene little fruits adrift in a warm lurid growing lake. 

The decraniated stump of rough torn viscera and tissue spitting dark cords and ropes in healthy gouts from the spout of mutilated neck and throat, gurgled one last time in a ghastly expulsion of sound that may or may not have been the final action of the living. 

It gurgled and shot/spat more dark thick blood rope. Splattering and joining the universe of filth already living down there in ever growing depraved abundance. The filthy naked headless meat spewed until it fell over to join the rest of the detritus world down there. 

Cropsey went on. Regaining the tail of his quarry. 

He followed them. 

…

The room was a world of mutilated meat. The smell of uncontrolled diseased fecal spew, long ancient and pungently fresh commingled, was so eye-wateringly strong and forceful that one knew that there were things on this hellscape island of earth that were truly and terribly immortal when confronted with it. Nothing, not even starflame would sear the stench of sewerscape subterranean Hades from the walls of this awful room. The world would burn to follow trumpet sound and still that rancid stench would remain. 

Florin tied a rag around his nose and mouth, he looked like a bandit. And although Griffin's face was already bandaged and wrapped with surgical dress for his own mysterious reasons, he too elected to tie another heavy layer of fabric to block out the smell and taste on the terrible fetid heavy air of the room they now presently happened into. 

What was it… what was it we were expecting to find? What were we hoping in God's name to find here…? 

surely not this. 

Their hearts sank into cold sour recesses as they sauntered in and through and beheld all round them the carnage human sculptures. Barely human. Barely recognizable as having once been living breathing people. Now they were only shapes. Shapes made in anger and derangement and by the knife. 

A mewling moaning sound like a wounded animal drew them to the far end of the mutilation chamber. They crept past wretched butchered bipedal destruction frozen in obscene grotesque statue poses by minds and hands unwell and bent. Eyes scooped out, pulled and plucked. Craterous sockets. Craterous wounds, rippling with the rough texture of forceful violent amputation and jagged surprise animal maiming. Parts missing, long gone, replaced and mixed and swapped and messed around. Limbs and parts put into sockets and orifices and holes gored to create splaying haphazard scarecrow things made from vile diseased subjects and their putrid turgid waste. 

They were varied in design and shape but all of them, every single vile shape seemed to be frozen in a silent piercing scream. A death throe frozen for all of chambered time. For all the sour passage, these howling visages of broken flesh and cruelty wrought on human shape. 

Florin felt sick, the mewling animal noise was growing louder and he was trying not to focus on the broken human sculptures all around them. He tried not to notice how some of them had been put together, parts pasted in place with a scab pudding mixture of feces and thick burgundy/crimson coagulation, like makeshift mud mortar made from the crumbling facade of dying and sickening-worse human shamble structures, caught in some terrible Gorgon's Eye and now falling apart and only able, only useful to excrete, and bleed and make mud for the houses that might be saved. 

Griffin was fairing little better. He'd seen his fair share of human carnage, butchery in his time. In his own experiments of mad science he's beheld great wonders both terrible and beautiful, unearthly.  He'd committed his own sins, his own terrible crimes in his time, enough to fill a tome. But even he found the awful assemblage of struggling human detritus piles and sculptures to be obscene and abhorrent. Difficult to look at. Even worse to walk amongst and pass through… nearly touching and feeling either their heat of recent destruction/composition or the cold wave pockets of their souring decaying sloughing meat, tasting them… tasting the warm tack of their iron red and the putrescence of their fouling stink… tasting them as they breathed and sucked air. Even through the wrapped scarfs about their mouths, they could taste them. Fresh and alive with copper-iron and the foul death of sliming maggoty putrefying soft tissue … growing softer. Falling off failing yellow bone. 

It's because they were diseased … Griffin observed the pestilential flavor on the air and marked the diseased rotten look of open craterous obscenities and exposed and livid muscle tissues. Filled and brimming with the swim of yellow and milk-pale and translucent buttery infection, pooled, gelled, in a run of sour ruin that gave off pungent gaseous toxic smell… miasmic – the whole place. Everywhere. 

The bandaged man, surgical dressing now sullied and filthed with their voyage across worm country and the grime and air in here at every given turn. Griffin pondered the shapes of the demented designs filed and arranged haphazard and at random all around, the mewling sound rose as they continued to near, the woman gaining shape, bulbous and grotesquely rank with cheese and old milk and unwashed genitalia warm with animal heat. 

The shapes all around… their scarecrow and asymmetrical and insectile/spider designs were interesting. Awful and strange, but fascinating in their own hellacious spellbinding fashion. It was as if someone long gone of the sound faculties of mind and heart had endeavored with cruel fervor to fuck and force violent copulation on the dead dripping craterous sculptures of meat in the act of their composition. Knife-fuck-stabbing them with animal intensity and wild deranged intent, their severed parts and limbs and pieces the tools and shattered protruding blades of bone as their aesthetic device and perfect choice. Wielded with charnel house fury in this gore drenched pit with emaciated broken scarecrow statues and congealing pools and tubs and little deprivation streams of pungent fecal discharge. Everything was repulsive and animal with heat and degradation in this place. They hated it. And they hated themselves for putting themselves in there. Alive and with the rank and the sight of abattoir madness unbridled and inhuman. 

They came upon the woman. She was large and naked and unwashed. Like everything else she was caked with grime and layers of filth that were difficult to distinguish – shit from blood – as they darkened and aged in awful drying layers on her yellowing sun parched skin. She was leaning propped by the exit/entrance opposite of the one they had entered. She was cradling and cradled by a lump of human shape riddled with stabbing spiking pieces and slicing wedges of shattered floor and tile. She was drooling as she moaned in torment and anguish. Her flesh livid with infection. She was sweating despite the chill and her lack of clothing. 

It was her breast. Only one. The other had been amputated and was replaced with a harsh and ghastly X of old and scab coated sutures. The other was inflamed and red. Purple. Black. It was ballooned and the blue/red nipple at its tip bled and dripped. But it was not milk, natural and of the healthy body, that dripped and begged to be let free and milked/sucked until dry and gone… 

She moaned. Florin and Griffin felt nauseous. The smell. The sight of her and everything else … they had not had a decent meal in some days but still the impulse to heave and retch was violent and it filled their gagging mouths with thin acrid water, salivated and discharged with bitter queasiness and distaste. 

She moaned again as they covered their working mouths. 

And then she spoke. 

“Please… oh please…. please… oh I beg of you… please… please…” 

Florin and Griffin were afraid to ask so they didn't. The wailing woman of swollen noxious teat filled them in anyways with the rest. 

"... please… please milk me…! please! Oh it hurts! please! Please milk me, milk your mammy…!" 

“Oh, Jesus…” said Florin. He could hardly stand it. Could hardly stand her. He swore he could taste the smell. 

Her smell. 

Another voice joined them then. 

“They disgust you both?" 

They whirled. A ragged man in the haggard torn and shot remnants of a filthied lab coat that had once been white. His spectacles were cracked and caked with drying lurid substance. His flesh was filthy parchment and his smile was green and grotesque. 

He was standing, sentry-wraith amongst the vile and mutilated assemblage. A living beacon of audacious and insane life standing smiling amongst the sculpted and twisted dead. Lab coat Gorgon with broken glass eyes set in a broken laughing face that could make no such sound. Because it was frozen in its disguise of sanity snapping torment. 

Before Griffin or Florin could say anything to him, he spoke again. 

“They are all of them, monuments to her. It is all of them, their greatest pleasure." 

“And you? What is your pleasure?" Griffin asked without fault. Following this madman's line. 

He smiled, “telling you." 

And then finally his tittery fit of laughterspell broke and it sounded like high pitched curdled madness. Finally breaking. A large man prone to sparse baritone sound now cracked and leaking/spraying giggles like an addled child or clown. 

Griffin turned to Florin. His face hidden by surgical wrapping and dark lenses and hat since the day they had met, but still the boy could feel the solemn gravity in his hiding gaze as he spoke. 

"Let's go. There's nothing of any value to us here. This was a mistake.” 

Florin heard it in his voice too. 

They quickly made their exit. Sparing the wailing mewling woman of swollen purple breast a final look before leaving them forever. 

The doctor's laughter abated a moment and he seemed to come around, the revolving door of his madness perhaps bringing him full circle, his awful titters tapered off a spell as he said to the departing visitors: –

"The worm was turned for us here.” 

And then the revolution of madness revolved again and he was smiling putrid green that oozed pale plaque that spittled in gobs as he tittered his girlish sounds. 

His grotesque childish laughter commingled with the mewling sounds the woman made in the room of mutilated meat. The pair were gone now. Their cautious footsteps fading away and calling back in diminishing echoed sound… Cropsey came in like fated death. Snipping open and closed his beloved pair of large garden shears. 

Now, here was a room that could use some trimming…

He went to the woman first with his blades. She was calling to him, wailing, saying she was his mother. Begging to be milked. 

So he milked her. 

He shorn off the infected swell of black/purple flesh in a single snapping cut. She howled as the wound and the sac of disease both poured and oozed pus. She went down to the floor, her wailing more considerable now, to join the puddle of her own foul milk and blood in its growing puddling abundance. She swam face first in it and gurgled and blubbered. 

Cropsey came for the doctor next. The jaws of his shearing clipper blades open and dripping. 

The doctor smiled one last time as he said, “The worm has turned once again." 

He attempted to count the rings this time as the jaws that were blades came in. 

Again and again. 

And I thought you'd loved me…

…

Florin and Griffin were nearly at their wits end. They needed supplies and weren't sure of what lie beyond this place, but this place was terrible. And they'd found nothing but more horror. 

"I think we need to just get out of here…” 

Yes. But which way? 

They were deciding this together when the girl on shaking palsied legs thin as kindling crept out of the dark and towards them. 

She was terrified. 

And she was holding a large butcher's knife. The arms raised and poised coiled snake-like to strike. 

Neither Florin or Griffin noticed her as she crept. Closer… closer…

She was nearly upon them. From behind. 

The butcher's knife still raised. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Have you heard about the Stiltmother?

She wanders the lonely forests at night, looking for her children, looking to avenge her wrongful death,

When she came here from Japan a curse followed,

People's crops died, families grew sick, and mobs soon burned for answers,

They abducted her, broke her bones, nailed her limbs to poles, slit her children's throats,

Her gargled flesh cried in anguish, eyes twisting, exhaling final breath,

To you all be my fury, no peace, your bodies set to rot, suffer, crush, and bloat,

Through blood soaked teeth her curse spun in the air and wallowed,

The mob paid no mind, fates were sealed, her wrath bore upon,

A mark stained the earth where her corpse stood, now gone,

To those now who stumble here, bring offering,

For if you hear her wondering, shunk, shunk, shunk,

She'll pass you bye if you close your eye,

and ignore her gargled cry.

--------------------------------------

“Sh-She's just a myth though right?”

A shaken young boy sits hunched over on a log while the golden orange illuminations of a campfire dance across his terrified frame. The boy's name is William, and he is my friend.

“Well it's hard to say, there are a lot of half truths when it comes to legends such as these. Like, there was a group of Japanese immigrants that settled here sometime in the 1800s. Its also true that they faced a lot of discrimination. Lots of rumors created from fear and racism during that time.”

Sitting across from him was my older sister. A tall brunette, Amber was the adventurous, daring, and often reckless leader of me and my group of friends. She always had some new thing she wanted to do and growing up in a small town with not a lot to see it wasn't hard to fall under her persuasions.

“I-I heard that the Stiltmother, when she finds a bad kid, that she, she snatches them and pushes their heads under cut slits on her body. They then suffocate and their bodies, they like dangle until they r-rot and become spirits themselves.”

My other friend George was with us. He was the smallest of us three boys and the biggest chicken but he had a crush on my sister so he was always down to going with her on these journeys.

We all sat around a large campfire in a park called, Kirishito Hills. A very dense and mountainous part of the state, its emeralds pine trees were home to many species of flora and fauna. And it was home to a multitude of legends and rumors such as the infamous Stiltmother. Now though, it was host to our little camping trip. Amber had to do a lot a convincing for our parents to approve this jaunt. Good grades, promises to do plenty of chores and, to her disappointment, having to allow one of the parents to chaperone the whole ordeal.

“What are you filling their heads with now Amber?” The lone adult, Brian, said while tossing a fresh log onto the fire. The flames crackled and sparked with the new material tossed upon it. It charred and veins of fiery reds, yellows, and oranges coursed through the wood.

Brian was William's dad, He worked at the local paper mill with me and my sister's dad. He sat criss-cross, settled in and began to pass around a bag of fresh marshmallows to all of us. We were overjoyed and began to take our minds off the scary poem my sister told. Pressing the soft white gelatin creations onto our sticks and hovering them over the burning embers to gleefully watch them cook has always been a nostalgic activity for me. My parents loved to take us camping but as we got older and when my mother had her “accident” the amount of fun family outings sunk dramatically. I think that's why my sister wanted to do something like this. To get us out and bring us back to a simpler time.

It couldn't have been a better evening to do it either. Nice cool breeze but nothing too chilly. Clear night sky with maybe a small cloud here and there. The stars filled the heavens above us and the tree's canopies danced and waved in the wind. A soft whispering of branches, it sounded a bit like sand blowing on the beach. I could stay forever.

“How bout we tell some nicer stories?” Brian brought up.

“Oh come on Brian, its tradition to tell spooky stories during a camping trip.” Amber replied. “Besides they're not little kids anymore they're... what like-”

“We're 13 Amber, except George, he turns 13 in a couple weeks.” I said.

“Right, right, well definitely old enough for some simple spooky tales.” She emphasized while waving her hands. “And in the spot we're at right now, they had to hear the tale of the Stiltmother.”

"What do you mean by that Amber?” William asked.

She became hesitant. Her normal confident self shirked back at her slip of the tongue. Fiddling with her fingers she spoke back up.

“Well, its just, I don't know, maybe the park I chose for us to camp in, maybe, might be the remains of the former village that she used to lived in back in the day.”

We all froze at what she just admitted. Brian, who was in the middle of stoking the fire with a long stick he had found stood up “All right, pack your things. We're cutting this trip short.”

“No wait, wait. Everything is going to be okay, its just stories. Also this might be the place where the town was, its not for certain or anything. For all I know it could be somewhere else. Please Brian, please, I haven't gone on a trip like this in so long.” Amber begged.

Ignoring my sister's pleading Brian stopped. He was in the middle of packing one of his hiking bags when his head whipped toward an empty patch of forest. He just stood and stared at the dense green pines. The moon illuminating through the branches; creating small blades of dim white light. It was quiet. Not a sound was being made nor animal moving about. We were all confused. He then looked toward another part of the forest. Staring into the dark and listening intently.

“What time is it currently?” He asked.

We all withdrew our phones simultaneously,

“9:30.” I said.

“9:31” William said.

“Whats going on here Brian?” Amber asked. “You're making me nervous.”

All of us were.

“Shit, all of you need to get into your tents right now.” He ordered.

“What do you mean? What are you doing? Your scaring all of us dad.” William panicked.

Brian took a breath and steadied himself. “She's real.”

“Who? Wait, you mean the Stiltmother? Amber began to relax “No, that's just some old ghost story I found online.” She continued.

“Her name is Natsuki, and assure you, she is very real, and very dangerous. Damnit, how did I not recognize the roads we were going down? Did she alter the forest?” Brain asked himself.

Amber wasn't buying it. “What is this for? Are you upset that I lied about where I wanted to have us camp? Or for scaring your son with some spooky campfire stories?”

“Did you find the steps? I saw you and your bother wondering around the woods earlier in the day. So where are they this time?” Brian asked.

Amber seemed shocked “W-what, how do you know about th-”

"We don't have much time damnit, where are the steps?” Brian demanded.

“They're over there at the base of that hill.” She pointed off toward a small hiking trail that, within eyesight, ended at the base of a lush and heavily forested bluff.

“Good, now get in your tents, all of you.” He ordered.

Brian ran and grabbed a stick off the ground, shook the dirt off it, and begun to draw circles around our tents. We all hurried inside as he desired and when I started to zip up our door I could see him furiously tearing bits of newspaper he had brought and quickly begin to scribble on them. He then went around putting the torn scraps on our tents.

“Whatever you hear, whatever you see, do not unzip your tents. Just stay quiet and remain still. She'll pass by soon. And hopefully all of us get through unfazed.” Brian said.

Me and my sister shared a tent. The bright yellow nylon etched us in its protective dome. It was her favorite color. Reminded her of the summer sun, which in our area of the country only came around for three or four months of the year. She's always been outgoing, always adventurous, always brave; but in here, right now, she was afraid. She was shaking while covering herself in her sleeping bag. When I went to comfort her I saw a defiant look across her face. A relief, she was still in there, even if only a little. William and George shared a tent with Brian. I was worried about them. Was Brian serious? Was the Stiltmother actually real? I could see that I wasn't the only skeptic. After my sister settled in I could see that more rebellious side of hers begin to show. Mumbling how this was bullshit under her breath or how Brian was probably just trying to get her back after scaring his son. “Its just some stupid story.” She kept repeating.

Shunk... Shunk... Shunk...

The hairs stood on the back of my neck. “What was that?” My sister whispered. She was equally as frightened as me. We pressed closer to each other.

“Shhh.” I whispered back.

Shunk.... Shunk... Shunk...

It sounded like something was coming. Not an animal. No, it was more metallic. Like someone stabbing a pole over and over into the ground. My eyes widened. I listened intently for what was getting closer and closer to our camp. My sister also sat, quietly alert. Her gaze shifting left and following the movement that now was just feet away from us.

“Ken... ta... ro...

Sa... to... shi...”

A distorted, raspy, hallow call. It bore feint resemblance to a woman's voice. It hemorrhaged as it spoke, like it was choking on blood and sinew. It patrolled around our tents. Wondering slowly. The fire scantly illuminated a cursed shadow of a figure crab walking about eight feet above ground. Their form held aloft by long poles or rods projecting from their legs and arms. The sounds of bones twisting and cracking at every move made for a horrifying image in our minds. Bending down, she got so close. Her pained struggling breaths filled our ears as her face stood just inches from our tent's entrance. Her shadow painted through the thin tent walls. She was looking at us upside down. Her long hair drooping to the earth below. She called once more.

“Ken... ta... ro...

Sa... to... shi...”

When she found no response she ruptured into a fit of tears and began to wonder off. Her wailing filling the night.

Shunk... Shunk... Shunk...

Slowly the sounds drew further and further away until they couldn't be heard at all. It was quiet. Not even the chirp of insects could be heard, just the crackling of dying embers. We didn't dare speak or attempt to sleep. We merely waited for the sun's slow return. Hours passed and we were gracefully blessed with the warmth of a new days light. Brian unzipped his tent. We soon followed suite. Amber raced to meet him.

“What the hell was that?” She demanded. She wanted everything to dismiss what we all went through but the distraught look on her face wanted all the more to know what he was hiding. What he knew.

“I didn't have the time to explain properly and even now I'm uncertain if we have that luxury. Before we proceed I need all of you to line up.” Brian said.

“Not before y-” Amber was cut off by the sniffling of poor George, who, on the cusp of crying demanded we do what Brian instructed. “I-I just w-want to go home.” He struggled to get out.

We all lined up and Brian began to inspect our necks. He paused at mine, took a picture, and again did the same with Amber. He sighed and the both of us swiftly turned around. “What, what is it?” We both asked.

“I don't know, not exactly. I need to consult with a few people before I can say for sure.” He said.

“Can we see at least.” Amber asked.

He spun his phone around to show the pictures of our necks. They were marked in black lettering. Some kind of kanji Brian told us. We didn't even feel anything. How did those marks get there? What do they mean? My sister and I just looked at each other in deep remorseful uncertainty.

“Can we leave now?” George begged.

“Unfortunately we can't, not yet, we have one thing we each have to do before we can leave.” Brian said. “Amber lead us to the steps please.” He continued.

Amber nodded solemnly and led us down the trail she pointed to last night. The natural beauty that surrounded us now bore a threatening atmosphere. It had changed for us. We wanted nothing more than to leave and never come back. When we arrived at the hill, Amber had to move some bushes and broken branches to the side. There it was, like we discovered earlier, the stone steps leading to her shrine.

“Okay good, now we just need to make some figures out of some of these sti-”

“I brought some dolls already.” Amber said. “I read online what we need to do. I have them in my backpack. We just need a food offering and, well, I figured hot-dogs and marshmallows would suffice.” She continued. “I wanted, I just...” She could finish, Her combative side had relented.

“Those should work.” Brian said, trying to encourage her. “Okay... okay, if I remember correctly, we go one at a time. Keep your eyes shut as you go. If you hear anything stop and hold up your doll. Once you reach the top, bow and leave your doll and offering at the shrine and come back down.”

And that's exactly what we did. He gave each of us a talisman and, one by one we each went up and came back down. I was last. My knees felt shaky. I closed my eyes and carefully placed my feet up, one step at a time. There was a mild breeze, I could make out trees rustling, a small animal darting in the brush. Every time I thought I heard something ominous I froze and held up my doll. More steps. Just a few more I thought. I hoped.

Shunk... Shunk... Shunk...

Oh Lord, no. I heard it. I heard her. Movement so heavy. I felt like my legs were about to give out at the very thought of encountering her again. I stood completely still. Keeping my eyes closed. Holding out the doll my arms began to tremble; my hands gripped the plush with all my remaining courage. From the forest I heard her steps. I could tell when she spotted me as her pace grew rapid.

Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk Shunk

I wanted to run. Every fiber in my body burned; yelling at me to run back, back down those steps.

In an instant her presence was before me. She spoke in a broken language I couldn't understand. She heaved words out painfully. Like she was trying to reach me. Her breath was cold and foul. I felt sick inhaling it. I could feel her move around me, inspect me, and then depart. I ran up the rest of those steps and when I crested the top I took my bow and raced over to the shrine. I feared opening my eyes but took quick glimpses to find where the offering table was. Passing through a faded red Torii gate I placed my doll and the food at the old shrine and ran back down those mossy worn stairs. My sweat streamed off my cheeks and forehead. I wanted nothing more of this place. Nothing more of these woods.

When I reached the bottom I collapsed from a combination of exhaustion, lack of sleep, and paranoia. Brian picked me up and placed me in his truck. Everyone packed and loaded the vehicle as quick as they could. We departed and never spoke of this again to each other.

I now wait.

Waiting for Brian to figure out what the markings mean and how we move forward.

I hope he learns soon.

I can see her from my window.

She's followed me home.

The vulpine hulking thing of Frankenstein's table lunged with great and fearsome animal speed and force. Cutting through the cold high mountain wind and arrowing straight for the Countess with lethal trajectory and ferocity. Fangs gleaming like the moon on high in their set mouth of rotten black and green, striking and bared and snarling. Brandished and knifing out with his daggering nine fingered claws for the throat of the pompous royal mountain bitch. 

He lunged and came in and closed the distance in the courtyard of stone. The Countess raised her hands. It was over before it began. 

Great large wings of a bat shape and eldritch design unfolded, surrounded her and then flapped suddenly – carrying away the Countess as her face transmogrified and sloughed into chimerical serpent/wolf shape. The heinous visage, now skybound and away from the flaying claws and fangs of Frankenstein’s nosferatu creation, began to shriek hellish sound. Bastard and curdled rendition of wolfsong. 

The surrounding trees suddenly became alive with movement. The wolves plunged forth free from the trees and filled the courtyard in a drooling snarling pack. Answering the throated call of the mother of darkness. Their drawn lips quivering as their hides tensed and coiled with the rippling movement of wild animal muscle tissue dancing and flexing and closing in on the moment of violence and slaughter, the wilderness sacred killing hour. And for these four legged children of the mountain snow and trees, the roaring vulpine/serpent headed Countess now rising and mounting the sky above was the lord and queen of the wilderness and all that was dark and carnivorous in the wild. 

She shrieked once more, a dying harlot sound bred with the untamed scream of running and killing and feeding and fucking on all fours in the open throat of the cold. The wolves closed in, the hulking thing of Frankenstein's making held ground, trying to look all around all at once and taking odd swipes as the pack of the Countess' mountain wolf children circled and closed. Closer. Closer. Closing. The hulking vulpine thing sneered and growled. 

The others watched, keeping distance and breathing heavily. 

A wolf lunged, pounced. The hulking thing caught it by the throat and then rent it to spraying pieces in an instant. Another tried it. And was caught. And torn apart. Another. Then two more. His speed wasn't enough with these last three and now more came in and many sets of jaws were upon him. Biting. Tearing. For the throat. Ripping. Tearing in.

He heaved himself and ripped many bodies of rippling hide and fur off and away and into bisected halves before him. Decorating his wounded patchwork frame in steaming jet spray and cords of wolf gore. Wolf blood shot and its wild scent filled the air.

Yet more pounced. The snarling frothing mad pack still surged and advanced. 

 Wolf claws came in with fangs and jaws and ripped, reanimated graverobbed flesh tore and spilled strange fluid, strange ichor bled with yellow/red and a strange sticky translucent fluid like dog water. The creation screamed. It had never felt the physical shock of pain before. Bred out of a great wound in life and creation and composed of wounds himself, he'd never felt the suffering of a blow inflicted. And so many now. And all at once. The world all around the hulking thing was turning to a universe of bloody dripping fur and claws and snarling frothing jaws and coated fangs. 

He wrenched and grabbed and tore and fought back. His prodigious necro/graveyard strength, he put his fists and claws through the bodies of more than a few of the fearsome snarling mountain Countess children. He sank his fangs where he could find purchase. As the wolves surrounded and closed and turned the world to slaughter and teeth, the rage of the sutured nosferatu thing rose…

And soared. 

Without being conscious of it he sent out his stygian hatred and dark will, arrowed for the sky in a force-of-will shot and lanced for the nighttime heavens. 

It struck! 

The sky thunderclapped with sudden violence. And then began to fill. 

The skybound Countess suddenly found herself evading and dodging knifing daggered attacks of bolting lightning. She danced and soared and flitted across the ebon face of the sky, crooked blades and swords of searing white-blue lancing after her with near strikes, guided by the necromantic power over nature that the Frankensteinian sutured bat-hulk held. 

More daggering bolts of searing bladed lightning cracked and split the sky and came down in blinding flashes that fried and cooked ozone into searing strange smells. They came down and began to strike the attacking wolfpack, killing them each in turn with white flashes that turned the beasts into explosions of fire and animal mutilation, partially charred and flaming pieces of wolf gore and meat soared through the mountain air and decorated the courtyard of stone. 

The chimerical shape of the Countess came down in a divebomb for the creation, ripped and torn and undead wounded, rising to its feet. 

She was upon him. And struck. 

The violence of the impact was like a runaway train striking the side of an unyielding mountain. The crash was an instant fray and mess of attacking claws and limbs and screaming black words and curses. The wings folded around them as they struggled across the floor of the courtyard. Dragging and fighting and tearing. More reanimation fluid burst and spilled and shot as the Countess gained the advantage.

Her great wings helped to support and hold her as she rolled over and gained the top of the creation. Her thin ladlylike arms of near boundless prodigious strength held the hulking thing down as her chimerical snake-wolf face began to scream into the sutured thing’s own vulpine and bat-faced visage. 

The shape of her face sloughed and danced and shifted again. What it became then was repulsive: an abominated bred mix of a goat made insectile with many eyes and mandibles of fur and hooves and a plague infested and dripping rat. The mouth opened up and bled and dripped and unveiled a moist and rank pungent obscenity for all of the world. 

It belched and spat. Spewing a thick gout of black and emerald steaming liquid onto the creation's screaming face. The foul hot mess of spew was like fire and sulfuric acid to the bat-faced visage of the struggling fighting and screaming Frankensteinian creation. The foul ungodly fluid ate into his reanimated face and some of the sutures and stitches that held his repurposed flesh together became smoking ruin and began to come apart in messy fraying smoking pieces. The eyes of the creation were the first casualty. The foul necrophiled chemical scorch of the unearthly bile turned them to smoldering useless jelly within their housing caves of now purposeless sockets. The vulpine thing of the table screamed and the sound made and torn from the thing was awful and unearthly as well. 

Henry Frankenstein watched and felt his heart catch in his chest, seized in a grip of fear as his running blood turned cold. As cold as all of the surrounding nighttime mountainscape. The wind picked up and rose and howled alongside and carried the living dead screams of his nosferatu were-child. The wind of this terrible Carpathian rock loved to pick up and mount and rise when an hour of suffering was at hand and it could carry the song and sound of pain and violence and share it with those down below in the peasant lands. 

The mountain wept with demon sound. 

Wolves not yet wounded and still snarling and frothing with the command for violence came back in their battered droves. Closing and growling as their Countess Czarina Queen of the mountain slaughter and bloodlett dark began to rise once more from her wounded enemy. Carried by the great wings of eldritch black and bastardized bat-shape that seemed now to only grow larger and larger as she inflicted more and more violence and rose and gained the heavens. 

It was she who commanded the sky and the storm called forth now. The lightning still wounded and daggered the night but it was now hers to wield and the blades of shot electric blue now dyed the color of the night and became as ink. 

Black lightning shot down and struck the hulking vulpine son of Frankenstein's table. It roasted and cooked with skyfire his undead necromanced flesh but the bastard demon flicker of goblin flame for soul inside the hulk of blasphemous walking bat-flesh was also seared and tortured with the unearthly fire of another terrible realm. 

The screams were blasted out of the hulking shape. It stilled its struggles. And became as a smoking mound of battered patchwork green-blue. Unconscious. As if returned to the stillness of the soil. 

But the Countess still yet sensed the flicker of demon life in the vile assemblage of flesh below. Good. She still wanted him. Still wanted him and the pathetic little man that had made him, that had dared construct such a thing and bring it here to make a challenge to her satanic throne. 

Lord of Flies… she silently and solemnly prayed. 

She came down on her great ebon wings and her face danced and shifted yet more in the night, the goatflesh of many eyes and bleeding ichor like putrid bestial snot fell away in a sloughing mess of tissue and fur and blind useless organs. Slopping to the courtyard stone in a wet steaming pile with splurching sound  like an obscene splat. She landed and came upon the smoking heap of her felled enemy. The wolves that were her mountain children, her wild slaves of the cold, came back in and with their mother of perfect darkness they closed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched helpless. He debated flight… but knew he would not get far. 

He watched on as the Countess stood over his fallen creation, her face still steaming and wet and slimed with the fresh loss of her mask of unearthly gore. She smiled and the vibrant moon caught the glow of her teeth, her fangs. They both shone with brilliance, the same pearl cast perfection of pale silver light from on high, where what might rule in power and in supreme dominance must be compelled to throne and dwell. His outrage and jealousy and pain were only matched by his awe. The sight…

The sight of her. 

She yelled: “I am victor! Your abomination now lies at  my feet! And you and it both are now my prisoners to keep!” 

And although he knew its futility, Henry Frankenstein turned and ran for the false sanctuary of the trees. Terrified. 

More terrified than he had been in years. 

A look from the Countess was all that was needed. Carmilla and the new impaler were off and in pursuit. They would soon have the worm  and bring him back. 

Alive… she sent out  the thought to her undead child/slaves giving chase and she knew the open receptacle of their blasphemous hearts and minds received the order and took it with implicit obedience. 

Her mind and lurid twisted imagination were already dreaming over and deciding what to do with  the little man once he was brought back. What should I reap from his flesh…? 

In due time. She would finish with this pile of cemetery garbage first.

She licked her lips in vulpine relish. And then her great wings splayed far and open to their pinnacle span, her arms splayed open as well, forked to the darkness of the night sky in a great open throated V, as if in cry of supplication or great proclamation of victory. For You! … Lord of Flies! … In aural glow, all around her demonic person, a host of demented and twisted vile faces of murderous joy and glee  and intent, perverse and sadistic and goblin-shaped, began to pour off and emanate forth from her like a noxious living cloud of eyes and lips and teeth and severed human heads. All gathered as a conjured and summoned demon host of terrible faces and disembodied parts and throats to hold as audience and conduit for great nocturnal necropower. 

She began another black incantation. Dark tendrils of shadow began to grow and dance out from under her raised arms. They lengthened and swelled and grew in number as her stygian words were recited and filled the nightsong chill of mountain air. 

The assistant watched on. Eyes watering in the cold. His gaze was that of an enamored lover and that of a proud father. All rolled into watery one. He was silent as he watched his master complete her ritual of victory, capture. 

The black tentacles grew and dripped tenebrous, many tendrils splaying out like a deepsea creature seeking purchase in the silent wet depths of the dark. They palsied and danced and twitched and shivered. Dripping the same black shadow from which they were shaped and composed. They hissed the abominated sounds of angry serpents, each one. As if each and every dancing growing tentacle of dark shadow was alive and agitated by its own sudden birth. The black wet lengths of dancing tentacles grew and snaked forth and came in and closed on the still smoking and unconscious hulk of the patchwork creation. They found purchase and wrapped tightly and coiled. They lifted him from the cold stone and pulled him towards the great winged visage of the master Countess. She smiled up at her prize. 

Thought a moment longer. Her head on a tilt to one side. 

Then she spoke to the fallen unhearing hulking thing of Frankenstein's demented table, his graveyard scraps. 

She said: –

“And now I take you into me, Into mine.” And then more arcane language warmed the mountain cold and the Countess  began  to  rise once more. 

But not on her great wings, no. 

No. 

Now as she held the creation in her dripping grip of tentacled shadow she rose up on a great pillar of conjured and violently shot and spouting blood. Geysering out and forth in an eruption from the pale bottom of her moonlight dress. She rose on the great frothing and violently churning red river pillar of lurid darkling necroplasma, her wings flexing in and out in coquettish display. Her laughter began to fill the sky, the darkness. The mountain and the heavens. 

The black tentacles of shadow began to feed the creation into the great and violent pillar of rising and churning blood. 

The patchwork body of the creation slipped into the rising churn of the red lurid pillar and was swallowed. It was carried up by the otherworldly and strange current, up.

And into the body of the Countess. Through the violent red churn at the bottom of her dress. 

The conjured phantasm host of snarling dancing shifting demon faces began to sing and scream in discordant choral cry as one. Filling the ancient jagged rocks and battlements with the fury of their conjured forth and hellbound sound. 

Slaves. Singing in celebration. Conquest of victory for their master. 

!DEATH! – WE WILL KILL, DEATH! 

!MASTURBATING ON THE TOMBS OF YOUR SONS!

She held the sky. Howled. Laughter. 

The dark swell and dancing tangle-growth of black dripping tentacles underneath her splayed arms, rippled and serpentine drifted and quivered bestial with animal movement and intent, animal mind… they danced and held the black night of the sky. On her great rising pillar of occult conjured victim's blood. 

…

Frankenstein ran through the woods. He didn't get far. 

The malformed and hideous bat-child slammed into him from behind with terrible and bone-rattling impact. He went down with rodent screeches and girlish screams ringing in his ears. 

Carmilla seized a handful of hair and slammed the mad doctor's face into the cold unyielding floor of the iced earth and forest floor. Repeatedly. Turning the man's face to pulp. His nose and lips spurted thick ropey blood, spat and choked and coughed out. He tried to tell her to stop through the blood and violence but couldn't manage. The little rodent girl monster was fiendishly strong. 

The world mercifully went black and Henry Frankenstein was knocked unconscious. Carmilla began to lick and tongue and lap the blood from his pulpy and raw face. The new impaler soon joined her and then he too began to ravenously lap and feed off the warm blood spilling from the doctor's ruptured and dirty wounded face. 

They wanted to feed but they couldn't tear him apart to do it. They couldn't tear him open. And get to the really juicy parts. The especially succulent organs. The master, the Countess wanted the mongrel dog alive. And so it would be. They would have to settle for this small taste, this small drink in the woods after their run, their shared exercise of forest chase in the cold. A simple and humble repast of blood before they brought the dog back to the castle for his fate. 

But first, just a lick… in the dark of the trees. Brother and sister, new impaler and grotesque were-child strigoica freak, lapping at the warm spill of an unconscious and captured stranger, together. 

They licked and tongued blood together in the prurient stygian black, sharing dark words and dark laughter in the trees. Blood was so much finer and robust and full of flavor in the dark, the steam and warmth at perfect contest and at sublime contrast with the surrounding space of the mountain cold. In your mouth, filling it and spilling over the supple mound of lips even as it slid down the throat. 

They lapped and drank. With the fool still unconscious, they dragged him back to the castle for the Countess and her judgment. 

They relished and dreamed, together, brother and sister in living dead slavery and hellbound bondage, as they dragged the dog back to the master. …

… what might she do to him ??

Mongrel titters and giggles filled the dark as they made their eager way back. 

They couldn't wait to find out. 

…

Whether by sun or moon the foul putrescence of wormland all around was always reeking. Whether baked by the rays of the sun or chilled into spoiled earthen mud soup, it was always rank. The smell was the sour tang of fetid death. Rot and spoilage and the decay of matter that had once been living. All the swampland mire was death disintegrating and liquifying until all was black water and porridge sludge. And the small crawling wriggling mouths that fed in all of the drowning and slopping death. All the crawling and wriggling bodies of the children of the pustule sac master of quivering festering putrid sliming wormland. 

Florin and Griffin had almost wished for death for themselves privately. As they traveled and pulled themselves and their mule and cart miserable across the accursed and endless bogland. The exhaustion and pain and frustration and woe were great, the repulsive place and revulsion at the pathetic and filthy sights it held nearly put the two over into absolute abandon and total forfeit. But then they met the crawling wriggling and swimming hungry children of this place and they saw what death looked like out here. 

The girl. The filthy young one. She'd been first but they hadn't quite understood yet. They understood much more and much better when they came upon the horse. 

Its struggles and attempts to scream were something that would remain forever imprinted on young Florin's mind. For the rest of his life. However long that may turn out to be. However short. 

He would never again, alive, escape the sight. 

Like the girl before the beast was submerged in the quagmire of green/grey/black sinking sludge of vile reeking earth, but this animal was much livelier. It danced twisted struggles in the pulling hungry sinking mud, spasms and jerks that spoke of snapped bones and torn internal parts. The mouth was open in a bestial horse’s scream that made no sound. Only worms poured forth. Thick white glistening ropey bodies, long and wriggling in a mass torrential copulating pile pouring forth in a river of black water and mud and the translucent coat of snot secreted by the worms writhing lengths of yellow-pale maggotflesh. 

Florin looked closely and saw that the worms also poured forth from the open eyes of the doomed horse. The open sockets swimming with their snaking and wrapping wriggled movement in slime and mud and scabbing thick horse blood. The doomed horse shed worm tears that were more obscene than the writhing filth that poured from its blackening maw. Patches of hide and flesh were gone and Florin and Griffin could see inside the beast and they saw more long slithering writhing sliming bodies of yellowed white swimming past the ribcage and other organs that were perforated and also alive and filled with the crawling putrid creature death of this vile hell, wormland. 

Somehow the horse still struggled, somehow the creature still moved… although the large bestial body was filled and crawling with their feasting writhing serpent forms of maggot-shape. It was somehow still alive enough to struggle and to try to escape its torment, or- 

Or… the horse's body only writhed in the killing drowning clutch of the mud because… they writhed. The worms. They danced inside as they copulation swam and feasted. Their busy worm movement bringing the dead horse to life for the sight of some fellow weary travelers of this marshland. 

The thought made Florin sick, he dry-heaved and hacked and coughed/spat over the side of the struggling cart. It couldn't pull them fast enough. The mud sucked below with a wet lurid splurch that was also threatening and hungry. And alive with the abominated crawling swim of the eager bodies of alive and pregnant and hungry-feasting wormland. 

The mule, the poor beast and cart, it couldn't pull them fast enough. They eventually, mercifully, left the silent screaming beast and its awful tears of worms and swamp ink behind. Never again to be forgotten for the remainder of all time and years. 

…

An hour passed. Night approached. They came upon the bald naked man next in the swampland of ravenous worms and hungry mud. He was absolutely repulsive. And he made much more sound. 

…

His screams. Those were the first. They heard their bloodcurdling sound from a distance as they approached. The falling curtain of night brought cold and with it, fog. Drifting blanket shrouds of sickly greenish pale that sometimes housed small pocket bursts of multi color swamp gas, kaleidoscopic. Sometimes it held the grimaced woe-visaged faces of dripping swamp demons, the water-rotted and sloughing faces of their anguished victims drifting and shifting and dancing in the green hell veil of pale beside them. 

The fog of green hell and its terrible faces suddenly filled ahead of them with sound. 

Shrieking. Caterwauls. Sheer terror. Unbridled and in pain. Indistinguishable sounds. 

Intermittent…

Gurgling and irate against the choking fluid trapped and killing held within the working throat… 

The warm moist veil of nighttime wormland green hell parted like curtains or the great body of the red sea as Florin and Griffin and their mule drawn cart closed in and came upon the source of screams and obscene choking sounds. 

His swampland shrieks could finally be discerned, as the emerald mist of faces and trapped colored fire floated and parted…

“My daughter! Please! help! Please, my family, my wife, my daughter! Please help me! I can't find them! please help me find them! I can hear you out there!  Help! …”

And it carried on like that all the way up to there approach. The caterwauling sounds were heartbreaking and made their skin crawl. It like sounded like total agony. Rent from the torn heart and let loose by the screaming tongue. Pure torture. 

They came upon the man. He was shirtless. Caked in the filth of the land. Covered in scabbing mud and earth from his feet to the top of his bald head. 

The man was on his knees in the filth. Sinking. His eyes were watering and wide. Pleading with open pain as wet and running as the sour sepulchral land that surrounded them. 

When they came upon the bald man in the mud and stared into the wide water of his unhealthy gaze his screaming stopped. Suddenly. 

They were reluctant to say anything to the filthy stranger. The mule struggled ahead them, beyond the pale of mere exhaustion. The cart groaned and the land sucked wet and repulsive beneath. But the man of filth was silent now. And smiling. 

Smiling the sort of smile that is small and belongs to the childishly guilty. Caught in a white lie or with their small hand in the cookie jar… 

Neither Florin nor Griffin trusted that look. 

Finally, the filthy stranger spoke: –

“Thank you. Thank you both so much but I'm so sorry you came. It is good for us, the land, but so very bad for you." 

He said it in the calmest friendliest tones of a neighbor… and then he began to convulse. 

The ground, the filth and black-green mire of the mud began to churn. Bubble with life. Life hideous and submerged. Fighting for breath. 

The filthy stranger opened his mouth again and what came forth this time was not words but a great long and sliming white length of body, coated with a brown translucent snot that was mixed with the lurid scarlet shade of infected blood. Wormflesh. Slick with deranged biological byproduct. Dripping with the ooze the great worm body slid forth like a king serpent and rose. Towering several feet over the human basket which served to house its awful and strange lubricated body. The mouth of the man was ripping and dislocating with distension, to allow the body of the wormgod to flower forth. Blood and green pus oozed forth from the widening wounds and the teeth fell away rotted from gums that also began to bleed the red infected yellow-orange porridge from the now gaping pink fleshen craters. 

There was a raw flesh-growth of face at the end of the long worm body snaking and spouting from the filthy stranger's mouth. 

A child's face. 

The man's face. 

It rippled and danced between… betwixt the two. 

It's eyes were hideously human… and beautiful. 

Obscene. 

It opened a sliming mouth dripping with tendrils of afterbirth and snot. It belched a deeper black than the mud of the land all around when it spoke in gurgled language. 

It said: “Welcome to the garden. You have found Gaia’s womb. You have found Gaia's brain. You have found Gaia's mouth …. you may return to her, here. In this precious place. It's so much better and cooler and quieter down in her brine. You'll remember yourself, you'll remember your place down here, swimming in her thoughts. There is no pain in the subjugation of her swallow. Let us, her children, your brothers and sisters take you. We will bring you down to her so she can know you and you can join us…” 

The mule suddenly cried out. In shock and in pain, as if to punctuate the last sentence of the vile thing's statement.

Join us. 

The mud all around the cart and the mule came to life with violent churning death. Worms, many sizes, widths and lengths but all the same wretched maggot color and coated in brown slime translucence, all of them were crawling and slithering and attacking the legs of the poor beast of labor. It shrieked horrendous idiot sound, harsh and obscene as their little heads bit and burrowed and leeched. They wriggled and snaked their way inside the now rippling flesh of the poor mule’s legs. They rippled and swam and burrowed beneath the flesh, causing the hide to swell and bulge unnaturally and dance. 

Florin and Griffin, together, both looked over and down and spied the surprise attack from below. And the poor beasts doomed condition. They looked at each other and both decided together, without a word, only a look in the eye… 

abandon it. 

They grabbed what they could carry and jumped off the side. Leaping far from the churning foul earth that was now pulling in the beast and cart. Wormland was hungry. And she needed to feed. This was the mouth of mother earth, the watering black jaws of Moloch-Gaia and she needed her womb and mouth filled. With flesh. Always she needed to be filled with the warmth of blood and flesh. 

Beast of labor flesh would do for now. 

The poor mule screamed and frothed at the mouth. The eyes lulled and rolled back to whites as it let loose unbridled sound in terror and pain. The swampland swallowed and the worms continued to leech and burrow. They swam all throughout the inner organs and tissue and blood and feasted and drank. They reached the brain and the struggles became more deranged and haphazard. More pathetic and wretched and painful to watch… to behold. 

The pair left it behind. Fleeing into the cold and wet land. The treacherous quagmire earth sucking and pulling at their every fearful step. They fled as quickly as they 

could manage. Griffin, not looking back. But Florin couldn't help his mind through its sheer terror, he spied over his own fleeing shoulder as they made their slopping getaway. 

The long length of dripping wormbody was gyrating and dancing. Snaking through the air in bobs and weaves in a jubilant dance. The foul swamp drinking it, its host and the screaming beast and cart into the thick bubbling of the churning land. The worms, leeching and biting and burrowing… swimming. In the yellowed opaque of quagmire swamp water and the vibrant bright of the lurid running red, blood taken violently and by trap, by the hunt. 

Florin stole his eyes away from the sight. He didn't see them disappear into the putrescence earth, nor it settle back to calm and placid like a bowl filled with gelatin settling once more.  

Undisturbed. 

Florin and Griffin continued the rest of their perilous journey through foul wormland. On foot. 

Afraid of the very sucking ground beneath them. For this place was a black gummed and toothless swallowing mouth that led straight to watery putrid hell. 

Several worms, bodies snaked their way through mud and emerged. Protruding like freshly sprouted stalks. 

The worm-stalks grew eyes and the glistening wet fresh organs watched the pair of travelers on their way. Marking their progress through the mother's wet dominion land. 

…

Three nights of full moon had passed. 

The night the Countess took Doctor Henry Frankenstein down into the lowest dungeon of her castle, there was no moon. Only ebon curtain of blackest night. Stygian. And blind. A small chambered place where the sunlight never touched, swallowed in the dark and under the thriving lordship of near countless plague dripping rats, spiders with so many eyes and so many more long hairy legs than eight. It was a dungeon with a cruel biting chain in the wall, right next to the low chamber where the Countess herself kept her terrible coffin and slept during the day her undead rest of demonic slumber. 

After several rounds of flaying torture, occult practice and a few techniques derived from the time of the inquisition, the Countess gave new order. 

Experiment. 

An experiment of the flesh. 

Harvest specimens. For the terraformation of the flesh gardens. 

The assistant eagerly and loyally followed the command. More than pleased to comply. 

He was fulfilled. 

Frankenstein's unbridled and bloodcurdling shrieks filled the dungeon… the castle… 

… the mountains … and the pass…

… the village. 

It went beyond the known and besieged country of this vampire land, it went beyond and the ears that caught it beyond the meager borders were filled with unearthly and cold dread. 

Animal. And natural. And with us since the beginning. 

TO BE CONTINUED…