Pass out. Die. Judith didn't care. No one would find her for days. It's not like she got any calls or visitors, and senile Estelle on the first floor was oblivious to the goings-on above. This pain was her only companion.
The lump beneath her moved. It slithered to a corner of the bathroom and licked itself clean. Clear, gelatinous goo squelched across the linoleum.
A thin film of water-colored haze skewed her vision, while her other senses remained acute. She heard the slick serpent tongue of the demon washing itself, the stink of sulfur and cervical fluid, the reek of contagion.
She struggled to stay still, but the stench was too much to bear. She leaned forward and vomited a colorful array of purples and greens. Within moments she felt better. The film over her eyes dissolved into a delicate sheet of dew and tears. She straightened herself out, took a long hard breath, and used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her eyes and blow snot out of her nose.
What the hell just happened? Did she miscarry? She wasn't pregnant, was she? It was
impossible. She rubbed a hand across her navel, felt the emptiness, the soreness of overworked
muscles.
Kidney stones? A ruptured cyst? Christ, there had to be an explanation for the pain.
She refused to accept the source of her agony sat panting in the corner by the tub. She made herself
believe it was the pain playing tricks on her—until it started gagging on its own excrement and the sickness it licked off itself. The sound echoed off the shower tiles.
Judith screamed and rushed out of the bathroom. The end of the hallway moved farther away as she paced forward. Her head swirled. Her body slammed against the claustrophobic walls. The cold sweats returned. Somehow, she made her way to the kitchen, she grabbed a long steak knife from a drawer, then squeezed inside the tight pantry space by the doorway.
“What the hell was that?” she whispered, sinking into the darkness.
The choking and gagging din filled the apartment like toxic gas.
She remained crouched in the corner of the pantry floor between the wall and lowest shelf, clutching the knife handle, waiting for the noise to wane. The short silence tied her stomach in knots and tightened her chest. There was nothing worse than silence, even after enduring enough trauma to last the rest of her life—which may not be for very long.
A terrible screech pierced the air. The unbearable ripping of bones through flesh. A sound like thick liquid slapping against the wall. The sound permeated the apartment, rattling the windows and sending valuables crashing to the floor.
Somewhere, a voice wailed, deep and guttural, and undoubtedly male.
Judith placed a hand over her mouth stifling her whimpers.
When the shadow peeked in through the crack below the door she screamed again. She scooted her toes closer to her body to prevent its shadow from touching her.
It probed a few moments, then retreated.
She waited, counting infinite shallow breaths, until she felt confident the coast was clear. Knife in hand, her joints popped as she stood and opened the pantry door. Just a crack at first. She needed time to breathe. Her heart pounded as she braved the door open enough to slide through
What she found outside was like the aftermath of a massacre: a murder scene without a body. Blood and black grease painted the walls in macabre abstraction.
The sizzling smells of meat and mucus wafted through the apartment. Unrecognizable gore caked the living room carpet. She bent down to examine it. It was slick in some places, lumpy like cottage cheese in others, and twitched and moved within the plush fibers of the carpeting. As she leaned in closer, she heard hissing and squeaking noises, and felt a tickle arc around her earlobe. Judith bolted to her feet as a colony of black Actaeon beetles rose from the floor and scuttled away into the walls, which rippled in discordant horror.
There was no escaping the sound. It burned her skin in symphonic resonance, becoming one with the chaos, becoming its mother, its queen.
She sensed a presence inside the apartment, messing with her mind and testing her sanity.
Shadow became substance. The figure appeared in the doorway of the living room, naked and
streaming with blood, yet glowing with the confidence of an Olympian god. This was no god, however.
That, she was certain of.
His eyes dug deep into her soul, not just with hunger, but lust. They were pitch black, displaying an exquisite labyrinth no mortal was meant to see --let alone walk through. But he welcomed her to its mysteries. He was desperate for her to read the stories off his skin, to taste the succulent familiarity.
She dropped the knife and waltzed toward him. Fear and fascination prompted each anxious
step. The balls of her feet sank into the carpet. She felt each prickly burr embedding itself inside her. Yes, there was pleasure in pain. Had she been wrong to resist it? She reached her arms out to her master, her slave. He was both lover and son. Angel and demon.
The cessation of pain in her womb—that great forest of bloody warfare—brought a sense of
euphoria. No morphine necessary. There was no Demerol to ward off the inevitable. No
knocking on Fat Larry's door begging for the Fetty she knew she sold her soul to the Devil for. She's
sinned so many times. Perhaps this was the penance, the glorious penance.
What had been gestating inside her—for centuries it seemed—had given birth after a long, excruciating labor. It was a miracle. A golden shimmer in the blackest sky. She could walk on water
now. She could part the sanguine sea, releasing the creatures imprisoned for so long below the earth.
“Come away with me” were his words. His only words. She wrapped her arms around him,
drawing him in close. He pushed her hair away from her face and kissed her lips. She closed her eyes,
feeling the journey begin, the heat on her face. The worm, gray and juicy, wriggled inside her mouth as
she bit into it. It slid down her throat like a pill. She felt a grip inside her stomach, a vice clamping
down, acid bubbling, burning away her insides to make room for something extraordinary.
His hands moved from the side of Judith's head down to her hips. They burned like melted
wax. Each body part entered her inch by inch, forming shapes inside her like molten clay: from the fontanelles he still possessed on his skull, to his hot, engorged groin, all the way down to his sharp, pestilent toenails. Each shape was a line spoken in the darkest of poems. Each line became a stanza, which, in turn, became a powerful incantation..
Her brain created thoughts that weren't her own. Diabolical reveries. She was thinking for two now, wasn't she?
What was happening inside her? What was his plan? What was the purpose of longing for freedom, only to imprison yourself over and over like a terrible nightmare?
It wasn't like that. She felt him inside in the same way she felt herself inside. There was a consciousness there. An awareness. She was transcending the pain and sorrow. Her eyes were aflame with secrets, her brain pulsated with the knowledge of the universe’s past, present, and future. She ached with yearning. How could one physical body house all this passion? Where was there to go from here?
The answer was anywhere. Any damn place she pleased. She would use whatever guise the moment required, take whatever precautions to protect herself and the legion she now housed within her.
She was so euphoric, she barely felt human, as if she was borrowing this body. She wasn't the one responsible for all the shit that had gone down. She was eager to know what it felt like inside the flesh and tear it all apart, to swim inside precious veins only to spill its contents, to live inside the illusion, the joy and pain, then to leave it all behind.
After all, it's not every day the abyss opens up to embrace you.
Without a second thought, Judith outstretched her arms and dove in.