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Quiet.
Dark blank quiet.
Nothingness?
No, not nothing. There is something.
A lone house with no heartbeats inside, dead and abandoned. There’s a body in the hall, still warm but no longer breathing. Were they important?
This house, this body, this death. Whose fate was this? Why do you care? Why do you-
You? You’re a you. But.. why? You want to know, you want to explore this new thing. This sense of self. But all you can see is what’s in front of you. Should you have a body like that man down the hall? What would it feel like? You try to look away, your field of vision shifting yet feeling the same. Something new blooms.. inside of you? Do you have an inside?
Sensation and awareness join you. You’re something that can observe and feel. You feel.. yourself? Aware of the space you occupy. But there’s something else, just behind you… Your vision ends but what is past it? The fuzzy edges give way to a rim of darkness that seems to cut off and goes on forever. In the place beyond what you can see something grows closer.
A tingling at the base of your awareness like tv static ripples through you. You want to look at it, you need to look at it. You feel it? It feels like.. hands? Cold and numb sliding up your back to grip where your shoulders meet your neck.
You can feel your body, you feel like mist and moss. The cool chill of winter freezes you. The hands slide forward and your vision locks. You can’t look around, eyes stuck on the pathetic mass illuminated by soft rays of moonlight from the slats in the blinds.
There’s a swirling panic that builds in you. You want to run, you want to get away from what you see. You don’t want to look at his face. You won’t look there. You won’t-
The hands tighten.
Light. You’re pure light. Swirling in the head of something that trapped you decades ago. Pressure. You no longer fear what holds you. A crack. You’re trapped in this skull. Something behind your eyes pops.
She’s helping you.
The cool flow of darkness that seeps into the empty space of your prison is like mana from heaven. You can feel the call. You can feel so much just beyond. You hear it. Her voice. She speaks, she whispers, she berates, she mourns. You hear it, you hear it, you hear it, you hear it, you hear it, you hear it your hear you hearing hear it hear it hear it hear-…
Everything.
A gasp rips through you, panic flooding your mind as your eyes flash open, air already being sucked in and pushed from your lungs desperately. It feels like you can’t catch your breath, your body cold and shaking as you sit up and come to. In the scramble for consciousness the details of your dream fades from your mind like smoke, leaving only the scent of change in its wake.
What just happened? The last thing you remember is closing your eyes and then… and then you were.. looking at yourself? What happened after? What happened before? Your hands touch your face to make sure you’re still here, fingers like ice against your cheeks. It’s the coldest you’ve felt since last winter, the oppressive heat of the apocalypse almost a distant memory. You suddenly remember. The heat.. the end of the world. The man. You look down and see blood.
Part of you wants to feel horror at the sight of your ruined body, your sweater drenched in blood, dark red soaked into the fibers and the wood beneath you, but for some reason you feel a little numb to it all. Not only in emotion but physically too. You shouldn’t be conscious right now, and you definitely shouldn’t feel this odd absence of pain. You pull the bottom of your shirt up and cover your mouth. Near the top of your blood stained skin is a large jagged scar, puffy pink skin in the shape of a lumpy slit a few inches long. How is this… a sharp burst of pain echoes inside of your head.
Don’t think about it.
The sound of wood fibers splitting draws your attention. Your eyes locking on the large bony back of your attacker standing by the frame of your kicked in door. He’s poking at the jagged edges of the trim that cracked when he broke your door. That’s right he.. Your jaw clenches, an angry quivering setting in your shoulders as you look at the threat down the hall. Your gun is on the ground a few feet away, unloaded but all you have now.
The barrel is cold beneath your fingers when you grab it, shotgun feather light in your hands as you rise quietly from the floor and draw it back behind your head with both hands. Anger has washed over any fear that may have stopped you before, the memory of what happened last night fully returned to your mind. He broke into your house, he attacked you, he raped you, he tried to kill you-
He’s pulling a chunk of wood near the top of the doorframe when you get close enough. The muscles in your arms tighten as you let the weight of the gun drop further behind you before swinging hard.
You can hear something in the stock crack when it makes contact with his head, the force from how hard you hit him reverberating through your arms. Almost instantly his freakish body falls, splayed out on the floor dramatically with his overly long limbs bent around his body and the floor while his stretched out spine twists unnaturally several times. Your gun falls somewhere, everything eerily quiet except for your labored breathing.
You didn’t expect that to really work, the anger that fueled you washed away by shock. His body doesn’t move, no swell of breath or twitching muscles. Something nags at your mind, the scar over what should still be an open wound, the way he violated your body and how it should have killed you, and now this.. Did you really…
Before you can finish your thought the hand nearest to you shoots out and grips your ankle hard, his elbow joint twisting with a sick crack to allow the movement. Your body begins to turn before freezing at the sound of his voice. An echoing laughter bubbles from him, the folds of his grotesque neck twisting as more pops and cracks ring out. His neck turns like an owl's and his eyes meet yours, slightly sunken with a sharpened look and a manic smile showing off his perfectly white teeth.
“HAHAHAHAHA!!! Are you fucking stupid!??” Something about his face shifts more, his neck stretching to accommodate how he’s twisted and his teeth almost elongating. “Did you really think that would work!” You can feel how his fingers dig into the sides of your boots, pain blooming in the front of your ankle that has your knees bending. He continues laughing at you, shame making you bristle as your heart thuds in your chest.
He yanks you hard, his shoulder twisting unnaturally as you lose balance and crash to the floor. The back of your head stings and your elbows and shoulders ache. Weakly you look down to see him, his body twisting and dragging across the floor to crouch on all fours by your feet, his eyes never leaving yours. He slams his hands down hard as he crawls closer, excess skin sagging from the chest and stomach of his skeletal frame.
He towers over you, dealing an almost psychic damage as the sight reminds you of what happened earlier. You only just notice the blood that’s on him, that detail making you feel small. The fingers he’d shoved inside of your wound are caked in dry blood, flaking where he’d grabbed you. The lower folds of his stomach and the top of his pants are soaked, the evidence of your assault no doubt present under the fabric as well. Your stomach hurts, a phantom pain making you cringe.
“What’s wrong?” The folds of his neck skin bunch and sag as he gets closer, nearly brushing against your chest with how close he is. “Where’d all that fight of yours go?” His hand touches your side and you jerk violently, a desperate startled sound stuttering out of you. It seems to trigger something animal in him, his eyes taking on a sharpness that makes you feel like prey. “Oh!” His thumb dips down to curl under the ruined fabric of your sweater and pull it up. “That’s interesting.”
With a rapidly beating heart something cold washes over you. Run. You need to run. With all the strength you have you punch him, the pain in your hand duller compared to earlier. His eyes shoot up to meet yours and you twist under him, trying with all your might to dislodge yourself. Something about his grip is different, if just for a moment. When you grab his wrist desperately you can swear it feels like you move him just a fraction of an inch before he becomes immovable again.
“Rhhg- LET GO OF ME!” Your next attempt is his face, hands pressed up into disgustingly loose skin to try and push him away. It feels like a clammy cool bag filled with bones floating in something soft, the skin draping over your palms as you press hard against his jaw.
“There you are.” His hand shoots up from your side to your neck, pressing down just firmly enough to make you struggle to breathe. You change your focus, scratching the hand that chokes you in a desperate attempt to make him stop. “Stay.” The command has you bristling, an intense almost ticklish tingling sensation in the meat of your shoulders as your body freezes. You wheeze out a breath, a small tremor setting in in your hands when he lifts your sweater again.
He sees what you saw, taking a long moment to evaluate your rapidly healed wound with an expression that makes you sick. He looks too happy, too enamored, too curious.
“What an interesting gift she’s given you.” He pokes at the puffy pink skin that’s scared over. “I half expected you to have that hole forever.” The thought reminds you of that visitor from earlier, the one who was always freezing. Had he been gored before dying? “Being one of us really is a varied existence, isn’t it?”
“Sh-shut up! This.. I’m not…” You don’t even know what you want to say. “Just let go of me!” You squirm under him once more, one leg free enough to knee what you can of him in your struggle. He doesn’t care about your fighting, still entirely focused on your stomach. His fingers poke your freshly healed skin hard, the pain forcing a groan from you. “Stop.” You can feel what he’s doing, his nail just beginning to break skin as he continues to press down. “Stop it!”
“I wondeeeeerrrr.” His smile widens, the folds of his face becoming more defined. “Do you think it will heal again?” His eyes flick up to meet yours. “I was already considering having another go at you.” Your heartbeat hammers in your chest and head, your breathing dizzyingly fast. Tears well up in your eyes, stinging and washing you with shame and fear.
“Please don’t.” A line of clear snot rolls from your nose down your lip to spread a salty taste on your tongue. Tears roll silently down your cheeks as sobs threaten to break past what familiar defenses you have. You want to die. You were supposed to die. Why is this happening again?
“But aren’t you curious too?” His neck pops with how he stretches it to press close to your face. “We’re just-” you can feel the surface of your skin start to break under his finger. “experimenting.” A whine pushes past your lips before you lose your composure, any grasp you had on yourself ripped away by how small he makes you feel.
“Sto-stop!” You can’t even see him past your tears, face scrunched up and ugly as you cry.
“Awwww, what’s wrong? Didn’t you have fun?” The hand that holds your throat lets up a little, his thumb stroking the side of your face and jaw with mock sweetness.
“N-no.” It’s hard to breathe through the stuffiness crying gives you, the throbbing in your stomach almost as painful as when you were shot. “I don’t want it, I don’t want this, please just leave me alone-!” You didn’t realize you were shaking your head until he grabbed you, the pressure off your neck a bittersweet relief.
“But that’s what got you here?” The comment stuns you, your sobs settling down to small sniffles and the stray tear. He stops pressing down onto your stomach, the relief like heaven. “What would you do all alone? Wait for someone else to kill you? Kill yourself?” The hand that threatened to break your skin smooths up your stomach to your chest softly, the sensation confusing and wrong. “You don’t want to die.”
“I-” Your throat feels so dry.
“Why else would you come back like this?” If you weren’t so scared you’d say something. Deny the idea of it. Of changing. Of being like him… But in this stunned haze you can only stare blankly at his grotesque face. A small part of you, aware of what you are without naming it, wonders what he had wanted so badly that he turned into a monster?
Before you can think anymore a sharp pain digs into your stomach. You look down to see his pointer finger stuck halfway inside you again. He’d caught you off guard, the smile on his face when you look up at him in confusion filled with smugness.
“What-”
“Do you think my cum is still in here?” His finger digs in further, the motion worse than when he’d done it before with a fresh unstretched wound. He slips it out and fresh blood begins to bubble out of the small hole. He licks the blood off of his finger, tongue stretching inhumanly to wrap around the digit almost flirtatiously. “Should we test the limits of our new gift?” Both of his hands settle at your stomach, pointer fingers digging into the fresh wound ready to tear you open again. “I have a feeling you’re very special.”
The sound of your skin ripping makes you sick before you register the pain.
“STOP!” He doesn’t budge as you grab and slap at his hands. He tears you open almost tenderly, making sure not to stretch your wound any further than before. “L-LET GO OF Mmm-e..” You can’t breathe, chest tight as your entire body shakes. “N-not again, don’t-” His fingers dig into you urgently, reaching in so far your lung starts to collapse. You can numbly feel him bend and scrape at your insides before he pulls out, his hand covered in red and… some sort of odd blue black goo?
“Heheh.. It is.” It takes a moment for you to realize what he’s talking about. That’s his…
In some odd stroke of luck something alerts him, his elongated neck twisting back dramatically to stare out your broken down door. Past his body you can see the soft glow of an imminent sunrise begin to light up the ruins of the world around you. It’s almost morning. He lets out an incredulous groan and stands hunched in your hallway, the scowl set on his face when he looks back at you almost debilitating.
“You-” His body freezes for a moment, eyes almost glassy before they focus back on you. His hand slams down hard on your stomach, palm digging into your fresh wound forcing the wind from you. “I’ll be back to see how this ends.” He twists his wrist, the sharp pain making you scramble to claw at him again. He almost growls when he yanks his hand back, like leaving you caused him physical pain.
He grabs your broken down door like its packing foam, slamming it against the outside of the frame as he leaves. It’s mostly leaned against one side, a clear view of the growing brightness outside visible from large gaps on the right side and top of the door. The suddenness with which you are alone again gives you whiplash, the confusion only wiped away when your middle aches.
The way your blood pools in the cavity of the hole he tore into you and spills out to drip down your side is jarring to look at. Your hand shakes as it presses against it, blood seeping between your fingers before you press down harder. Shit. Shit, shit, shit!
Like last night- the other night? you drag yourself to the bathroom. Hands shaking as you clean and attempt to patch yourself up again. You don’t have enough bandaging, the singed remains of what you’d tried to reuse not a valid option right now. With a spike of despair you seem to lose the strength in your legs, falling down to kneel at the edge of your tub.
Why should it even matter? Clean your wound, patch yourself up, try to live. And for what? To run away? Where? To stay and fight? Fat chance of that working. Your arms feel weak. You’re better off bleeding out. Something cold seems to wrap around your body. You want to be done with this miserable existence. A wave of vertigo washes over your mind. You want to die. You want to be done. You want-
You can feel the cool floor against your face when you fall, but not the pain that should bloom in your cheek and shoulder. It feels nice like this. Heavy and numb, staring blankly at the floor and rug just past the open bathroom door. It’s like you’re being cradled by something, a comfort you don’t think you’ve ever actually experienced before? This is the most comfortable you’ve felt in so long. Since you slept. Since you dreamed of-
You stare blankly as the hallway fills with light from your poorly replaced front door, growing brighter before dimming back down. You close your eyes and breathe deeply, wishing oddly that you had a mother. Would you have cried out for her? It seems to be a cliche for a reason, would there have been some comfort in it? Would she have loved you? Did she feel this at peace when you killed her? Or did she want you dead too?
The cool blanket that numbs you gets heavier, the arms that cradle you squeezing so tight you nearly lose the energy to breathe. You can’t think about death like this, soft and small floating in nothingness while the sight before you turns into a murky grey stain. Time crawls by as you lay on your bathroom floor, the weight on your mind gradually dissipating as the thought of killing yourself leaves your mind completely.
It’s like you’ve had the most perfect night's sleep when you sit back up, your body soft and warm. With a newfound apathy you lift your blood stained sweater to look down at yourself. Thick stretches of dry red flakes and large clots decorate your skin, all stemming from the same strikingly clean stretch of uneven puffy skin.
You healed...