Through mists of agony, she awoke
to the sound of seawater gently lapping against creaking wooden planks. They had been worn smooth by the passage of
time and were comfortable in their way. A
minute more of blessed sleep was all she needed for the pain to recede.
A minute passed, then another, then
another. There was no respite. No subtle dulling of the torture she had
endured for… months? Years, perhaps? Time quickly became a meaningless standard of
measurement under such duress.
An unforgiving stone slab. The sotto voce whispers of voyeurs enlivened by
her torment. After every cut, every
piece of her removed, he was there.
His voice, an adagio so soothing, so
cloying, so terribly ostinato.
That horrible, beautiful scythe swinging
andante, ever closer, promising an end.
Promising an escape from all his
tender ministrations.
No, the pain remained a hammer
striking the taught strings of her being.
The sweet release of death proved neither sweet nor release.
Through mists of agony, she
stood. Her own body creaking, unfamiliar. Confused, surprised, she saw herself unbound,
whole, a person once again.
Mayhap she was not dead after all! Had she been rescued? Had she been, at some point in her brief but
welcome moments of unconsciousness, whisked away to a ship to be delivered home? Hope flared.
Looking around she noticed other
passengers staring at her hungrily.
Well, she was no stranger to the lusts of men. What woman was? She ran to the railings to see a wine dark
sea stretching off to the horizon in all directions, broken only by small rocky
islands. An uncharted topography so ripe
for exploration that her enthusiasm for the unknown almost blinded her to the
fact that the sky was…
The sky was…
Hope died.
Unnatural. No cloud, no sun, no moon, no star decorated
the space above her. A bruised sky of
dim purple and wan red suggesting sunrise or sunset but promising neither. No, she watched, gripping the railing until
her hands went numb, until her fingernails cracked and broke and became just
another voice in the chorus of fire running along her nerves. Nothing changed. Nothing moved.
Her chest ached at the
realization. Frantically, as a memory surfaced,
she opened her shirt.
A hole.
Blood seeped and pumped and churned,
but no heart was there. It had been cut
from her, leaving a ragged, gaping wound.
Something like despair wound its way into her soul. Why, then, if she were truly dead, why was
she still suffering?
Through mists of agony, she heard. The beating of her heart. Somewhere distant. Somewhere kept alive by an obsession so
strong, it kept her from death as well.
It was not lust the other
passengers on this voyage had in their eyes.
They were jealous. They detested
and desired her in equal measure for her living. They would turn on her, eventually.
But even as she watched, they became
something different. Something less. The further from port they sailed, the more
they unwound from their earthly selves until they were more akin to shadows and
specters than people. Casting off their
humanity only seemed to invigorate them, and suddenly shadows had become as
threatening as people generally were in life.
It was not lost on her that she
remained herself. Or, as much herself as
she could remember. So much had already
been taken, stolen from her. Not least
of which had been her name.
Circumstances forgotten in lieu of
current peril, she weighed her options. Stay
and endure the same as she had in life.
Jump overboard, face the unknown, and rely on her ability to swim and
will to persist. The former offered
certainty, while the latter offered a chance for anything else.
If she listened, she could follow
the beat of her heart all the way back.
Claim it. Find peace in true
death.
She jumped.
The collar of her mortality dragged
her under. She fought, kicking hard,
dragging herself upward to the surface. For
such a talented swimmer, even in undeath, to drown upon first touching
water? The ignominy of the thing!
The sea swallowed her. Infiltrated her nostrils, flowed mercilessly into
her lungs. She thrashed and gagged and
spat, desperate, fighting upwards, struggling for air. As her vision swam, greyed, as her panic wormed
deep into her brain rendering her insensate, the water pulled her ever
deeper.
Deeper.
Through mists of agony, she woke to
darkness. She coughed, emptying lungs
full of icy water that froze her guts.
Relief met bowel clenching terror as she took a deep breath of the same
water. Begging and pleading, desperate,
fighting upwards, struggling for air.
Deeper.
Over and over again, she woke only
to drown. Only to freeze. Only to be crushed by the incessant pressure of
the miles of ocean above. Over and over
she fought to survive, to breathe, to feel anything but the unrelenting despair
and unceasing pain.
Deeper.
A lifetime passed. Two, ten, uncounted, unknown. An eternity of suffering in the depths,
sinking deeper and deeper, suffered two minutes at a time.
Until...
Madness
had consumed her mind. Lights flickered
in the distance. She had seen them
before, in her limited moments of lucidity.
Shoals of the lost and damned.
Schools of those who had given up the fight to be drawn to those
that still were. They came closer,
predatory intent easily seen as they arrowed towards her.
Anger overwhelmed despair. She knew she was there because of someone, this
was happening because someone meant for it to happen, though so many of details
eluded her. And those… those ghosts slowly
ate away at her very being. Devouring
her memories, gnawing away at her self, eroding everything she was. Had been gorging themselves as she sank.
Raising her hand to stave them off,
she saw her own pale skeleton. Finger
bones protruding from bloated, chewed skin.
Her mind gone, taken by as many as could take, and her body with
it.
In a flash of unadulterated hatred,
of pure madness induced rage, she remembered her name.
And used the sharpened end of her
finger to carve into her forearm.
The ghosts scattered, denied their
meal. Embracing the inexorable descent,
she no longer fought for the safety of the surface. Numb now to the icy water, revenge would be
her breath as she sank. No more
struggling, no more drowning, no more pain, only the torment of the slow crawl
of time.
An eternity passed.
Full of hate.
Full of madness.
By the time she saw the necrotic
light glowing up from beneath, she understood where she was. This seabed was where forgotten Gods came to
slumber and die. Billions of years and
trillions of Gods forming nightmarish strata of tentacles and metallic limbs
and unidentifiable anatomies.
Even dead Gods dream, and in their
dream states they birthed innumerable horrors that lived brief, flaring existences
only to be snuffed out and unmade by the pressures of reality. They fought each other and scavenged the deadfall
of souls just like hers.
No.
Not like hers.
No comments:
Post a Comment