THE CARVING IS BEAUTIFUL. Why can’t I carve? The details are perfect, crisp as the day they were chipped from the granite four generations ago.

She is the epitome of beauty. Her statue looms to the left of the dark opening. A pointed archway into the unknown.

Though it’s not designed to resemble a tongue, the running cloth emerging from the dark looks like one. We stand on this running cloth leading to the dark. The rug is still red, though the dying sunlight has stolen some of its colour. The priest before me frowns, scrutinising every aspect of me, examining the smallest details of my naked body.

Mother sniffles in Father’s arms while the priest completes his examination. My eyes sting from the alcohol. The priest has drenched a cloth with it and used it to scrub the green paint from my face, the paint we had hoped would hide the features that now lay bare, exposed for all to see. The priest clenches the paint-soaked cloth in his trembling fingers. I train my gaze on the green drop that clings to the fabric. The cloth glistens, the drop swelling until gravity takes it. It lands on the hand-woven red rug.

Why can’t I weave?

“She can’t paint?” the priest whispers to Mother. She shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. They fall clear and beautiful.

Don’t even think that!

“Draw, write, sketch. Anything?”

“I can sing,” I offer. The priest shakes his head, but I go on in spite of him “I can…” My words stumble over my split tongue. The modification hasn’t been enough.

“If you can’t create beauty, but only possess it…” He trails off and shakes his head again. After a long moment, he continues. “It is not enough to simply be beautiful. You know the law. If you cannot feed the gods with something beautiful that you create, then you must feed them with your beauty.”

Mother stifles a cry with her hand, more tears glistening against her scarred skin.

“Scars wouldn’t work?” I ask, my voice softer.

“Not anymore.” The priest sighs, pinching the inner corners of his eyes. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more to be done.” He gestures to his groin and the tented fabric there.

Dammit, stupid man! If he wasn’t a horny shit I’d be in the crowd, painted green, hiding below the colour.

Mother screams into her palm, her chilling caterwaul bubbling through her tears. You’d think I would feel fear, but my heart is pounding too hard to know what it feels.

“Sputum Stagnant Moss,” the priest announces, turning to the still, silent crowd. So silent, I had forgotten they were there. “I find you beautiful!”

A collective gasp sucks every scrap of air from the space around me. The open sky above steals the rest.

Mother begins to babble, speaking gibberish peppered with the words, “Not beautiful, anything but beautiful!”

Father falls to his knees, clasped hands raised in supplication to the red-robed man. “No, no, please, not my girl. She’s barely pretty. Look at her hair. How hideously it curls! Or, or her tongue. The freckles that mar her skin! The Gods won’t want such fatty thighs, or… or…” Father stammers to a stop, his head bent in defeat.

“Though you did well to hide it with paint…” the priest discards the sullied cloth, splattering my disguise across the stone. “...your beauty is striking enough that the Goddess would envy it. To appease her wrath, we offer you to her!”

I stand firm, tall, hair curling in the wind, every muscle tense. Curse the hard labour that sculpted my body. Curse my mother for my cheekbones, and father for my hair. Curse them for not breaking my face when I was young that I might grow up deformed, left alone.

My parents whimper last declarations of love and apologies and murmur pet names that shake me. My tears can be beautiful—they won’t damn me further.

Guards motion my parents away and they’re my parents no longer, reduced to onlookers.

“I love you too,” I dare to whisper.

“You are beautiful but can offer no beauty greater than your body.” The priest turns to me, downcast eyes set above his flattened nose. I wonder how old he had been when it was crushed to that shape.

“Today, eighteen years ago, you came into this world through your mother’s suffering. Now, your suffering will beget not one life, but all our lives. Go sweetly into the dark, and be coveted by it.”

He steps off the carpet and it jerks. I fling out my arms for balance and scowl at him. Rage surges through me. He didn’t have to do this to me, to my family. Even if he did believe I was beautiful, he could have lied. He could have accepted my disguise. He could have agreed to disfigure me.

But he did none of those things.

There is no greater damnation than beauty.

My thudding heart brings clarity to my thoughts. Fury thumps in my chest. The carpet reels towards the carved maw. I spare a glare at the statue. This is stupid.

“Fuck you!” I shout at the stone. “You vapid bitch. I hope you choke on me!”

If the crowd reacts or hears me at all, I miss it. The sun’s warmth presses to my skin before it’s snatched from me, just like everything else. The shadow overhead hangs like a liquid that has forgotten gravity. It pulses, rippling towards me. Eager to feed.

“Fuck you too,” I snap at the dark. It is burning hot, searing my skin like a perfect, scalding bath. The red rug beneath me goes on forever, never-ending. I see nothing but the rug.It reaches out in front of me like an arched tongue in an infinite mouth. I close my eyes, ignoring the crusty tears that have dried on my eyelashes.

“Oh,” a deep voice coos, masculine and bored. “Another one.”

Something wraps around my leg, hotter than the darkness that envelops me, damp and clinging. “I’m not into tentacles!” I scream.

“It thinks it’s funny,” a second voice hisses. “Throw it with the rest.”

The rug sags under me, and I topple into the nothing below.

I land on something squishy. A few hard bits jab at me through the doughy surface. I open my eyes, trying to orient myself.

A soft light falls, golden, beautiful. A face snaps into focus near the ribbon of the red rug. The statue is a shallow representation of perfection. How could my plain, freckled face be a threat to hers?

“Not going to beg for your life?” she mutters. I shake my head. Fuck you.

Sharp glowing eyes narrow at me then flick to the side as her full lips pull up into a grin. Dark purple stretches all around me, thick tendrils that weave in and out and cover everything but the soft yellow of a perfect predawn. In this place, the beautiful face outshines any rising sun. Like stretched-out eggplants, the dark roots weave in and out of lumps, growing from them. The face withdraws and the dark stretches down, settling over me. When there’s nothing left to see, I feel them. Burning hot, pulsing like thick fingers, they wrap around me. The tendrils.

They cover me no matter how I thrash. They hold me down no matter how I scream.

Wet, sweet and foetid, a tendril presses against my lips. I stop screaming. The thing presses harder. My jaw can’t fight the pressure. It’s heavy on my tongue and cuts my air off as it slides down my throat, stretching it to splitting. I gag, hoping to vomit it up, wanting it out of me but knowing hope is lost. Pain bursts in my chest as it bores deeper into me. I draw hurried breaths through my nose but it’s not enough. I can’t fill my lungs, but I think this thing can. It feels thicker than my arm, straining my mouth to a groaning snap as my jaw tears from my skull. Pain lances through me, down my neck to my arms. I try to lift them, I try to free myself. I can’t.

My lips are rolled in, cutting on my own teeth as the tendril slides into me. Deeper. Harder. I feel my sternum bulging.

Something pops. I’ve never felt so full.

Warmth floods me, the metallic tang of my own blood overriding the grotesque thing invading my body.

I curl up.

The whirling in my ears drains.

The pain drains.

In the dark, my beauty drains.

About the Author:
Elsbeth Eden is currently living on the wet, soggy rock that is England. She’s as upset about it as the English. After leaving behind sunlight, birds, anti-poaching and all the fun security aspects of her home country, she came to the rainy one. She’s considering getting her brain checked after the decision. Elsbeth is a writer of a little bit of everything under the speculative umbrella and decided to finally try and get some work out there. Again, getting brain checked. Turns out it was ADHD.