There is a terrible pain in my gut, a wrenching, I know that there is something inside me that is moving, part of the experiment I had to escape from. I can not bear to remember what they have done, it causes me to retreat into a far away place, where they can not touch me or inject me with serums. This thing within me steals my strength, my energy, drains me of the nourishment I take in. It steals away into my mind at night, probing with its alien little hands, whispering words that make no sense. I try to tell myself it is a virus, some strange biochemical drug being tested out on the unfortunate dregs of society. The thing inside me assures me it is not, it is something altogether different, something a little more terrifying. I can sense its smugness, all safe and warm in its little cocoon of my flesh, reaching its unseen tentacles into my brain and bending me to its will. There is some form of thought that this entity contains which leaks out into my system, carrying messages and emotions in my blood, in my cells, to the receptors in my brain. Visions fire off on the backs of my eyelids when I close my eyes, flashes of smoky images stealing a moment in the center of my mind, all random, some terrifying, other mundane and senseless.
I feel pain bright and raw, a streak of lightning in my belly. The sensation is so intense, the color red floods my eyesight, and I am left gasping for breath. Feed Me. It says. Another searing pain lacerates my insides, burning fire hot, boiling tears to my eyes. I tried to fight this in the Center, and found it much less painful to give in to its wishes. I knew I would get no nourishment, and the thing inside would become stronger. Eventually, it would kill me, and knowing this, I came to a certain conclusion. Some peace fell upon me, for a brief moment, washing clear the pain and memories so burdened on me, I had a heartbeat of joy. There is a way out, and a coincidence of fate brought the answer to me, for there it was, right there across the street. Over a door there hangs a pink flashing sign, LIQUOR. May not be Mandrake root, but enough alcohol should do it. I am going to have to block my mind from what I am about to do, as to not alert suspicion from the Other I carry It was already awake, needing its nourishment, I was going to have to be careful.
I begin to think of an old song I heard once, as I cross the street. "That'll be the day-ay-ay that I die." I smile at the irony of it, but focus on that thought to block the Other out. I imagine a hand in my mind, turning up the dial on a radio to full blast, and look straight at the neon pink sign. "THAT'LL BE THE DAY, " I am at the door, a gentle looking older woman is at the register, wearing a pink bath robe, her long gray hair smooth and flowing down her back. She smiles as I walk in, I know I must look frightful, for her expression changes and she looks alarmed. I don't want to scare her, I just want to ask her for help. She looks so frail to me, a little skeleton wrapped in skin and a furry robe, I wonder if she could help me at all.
"Excuse me, Miss?" her voice is foreign, and spoken with refinery. I try to speak, but my mouth is so dry, my tongue fat and useless. The edges of the room begin to fade, the thing within moves, a ripple of flesh quivers across my abdomen in its wake. I try to put my arm over myself to hide it, but I know the old woman has seen, her eyes took on a tarry look.
"What in God's name is wrong with you, miss?" she said, clutching at her bath robe. I cant even begin to think of the words to tell her, the room is going dim, and my hands wont stop shaking. I open my mouth to try to form words.
"Wu-uh" I choke forth, trying to get my words out. She starts across the room towards me, seeing now that I am trying to speak, her slipper clad feet move noiselessly as she rushes. She reaches her hands out before her as she walks, as if feeling the air before her will help her reach me more quickly.
"It's alright, Dear, take your time, let me help you." She puts a soft hand on me, scented with lotions that made her smell of cinnamon or baked cookies. She hands me a bottle of water, which I take, with eager gratitude, emptying half of it at once. My tongue loosens, I look her in the eye.
"Worm" I say. I don't know what else to call it, this monstrosity implanted in my body. I don't know what she will do or say, I just hope she does something before this whole room slips away into the void its disappearing into. She holds my eyes, hers now wide. I can see that although she looks at me, she is not seeing, I can almost hear her thoughts as she bites her lip in concentration.
"Come with me, " she says. I am surprised when she puts her arm underneath me and neatly lifts me to my feet. I am escorted across the room, and seated on a red chair in what appears to be an office. I notice little jars and pills along most of the walls, books and herbs placed here and there. A pestle and grinder take up one shelf, with bags of strange items neatly tied off and labeled. One of these such bags she takes and hands to me.
"Take some of this and place it under your tongue." She instructs me. "It will help you stay conscious when it gets into your system." I do not question her, but do as I am told. It is dry and bitter, with a numbing effect. I feel myself perk up a bit, the edges of blackness now stretching farther apart and out of sight. I feel myself begin to relax, no objections raised as of yet by the Other.
"You say you have a worm, " She says to me, in her odd fancy accent. "I do not know what sort of a worm is so big as to have caused what I have seen move in your belly, but I think I may be able to help you. Do you want me to help you?" She is very close to me now, I can feel the body heat coming off her skin, wafting out that lotioned, bakery smell. I am not sure how she could possibly help me, but if she gave me enough alcohol, maybe I would pass on in a drunken stupor and not suffer terribly. I wondered grimly if that is what she too, had in mind.
"Yes. Please, Ma'am." I reply, wondering when the Other would realize what we were speaking about. She nodded at me, gathering herself up, and busied herself looking around the room. She spoke to me with her back turned, hands searching as well as her eyes as she sought for something.
"When I was a younger lady, we had a drink in France that was popular for many things. It cured insomnia, writers used it for inspiration to court their muse, it was even used medicinally. It is a strong and rather potent drink, however, and has some strange effects, but I say it will help you with that worm you carry." She looked excited as she spoke, the tarry look gone from her eyes, replaced with purpose. "I have not sold any of this, or indeed drank any of it myself, its not legal in these parts, but I keep it, just in case... ahhh, there it is." She picks up an old dusty bottle, turning it in the light to be admired. A smile bloomed across her lips as she saw it was indeed the one she was looking for. "Here it is, then. Absinthe Nectar of the Gods, they say, the Green fairy. Sweetened with anise to take the edge off. We'll use that to poison the worm." She held forth the bottle to me, handing it over as if she were relinquishing a sacred object. I withdrew the cork and passed it under my nose, it smelled of wild black licorice and something not so pleasant underneath it.
Flashes came then, behind my eyelids, followed by violent surge of pain. My insides felt as if a hand were clenching my intestines, eviscerating me. I saw visions of myself when I closed my eyes against the pain, hunched over, blood drooling from my mouth. I heard the Other scream in rage in the back of my head, twisting in knowledge of what was about to be done to it. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to wash the visions away, still seeing myself vomit up blood, my body wracked by convulsions. It was threatening me., trying to scare me off, trying to tell me I wasn't even to dare, that I would die...
"Drink it!" The older woman urges me, grabbing my arm and sitting me back. "Drink it now, who ever you are, for the love of God, drink it!" I move my arm to put the bottle to my mouth, but pain sears me, freezes my arm. I feel something warm and wet fall down my face, and it takes me a moment to realize that I am crying. The bottle is pulled from my hand and placed to my lips, the old woman trying to pour it down my throat. It is sweet and bitter both at once, and it opens my lungs and chest, its taste shocking to my system. I work to swallow as much as I can, ignoring the thrashing in my abdomen, and the spillage down my neck and chest. I reach out with my mind, using my will and concentration to force myself to drink as much of it as I could. I can feel the Absinthe going down my throat, into my body. It leaves a cooling trail which radiates from my chest, into my arms, into my mind. Time seems to slow down, measured only by my heart beat... it seems to echo and reverberate everywhere at once. In my head, from the air, from my skin. I can see my heartbeat in everything, and everything in my heartbeat. My vision changed, my eyes no longer seeing things as I ever had before. I could feel the rushing of my blood, its escalation through my veins, the steady swish-swish, swish-swish of my heart pumping.Form and colors no longer make sense to me, all melt together at once. There is a humming noise in the back of it all, I think the worm is screaming.
"Let it happen" the woman says, her voice slowed down an heavy, words forming from her lips and floating through the air, little white letters levitating in space before her lips after she spoke them. "There is a poison in you, the worm cant handle it, but you can. It will pass from your system into its own, you will still get some effects. Ride with it." I can feel the worm retaliating, it begins to thrash, and my world becomes one single musical note of pain drawn out on the endless bow of some chaotic string. The woman is screaming incoherently now, words in a language I can not understand. Reality twists in a protean stream before me, I can not trust what my eyes and senses tell me. What I do not question is the severe pain, and the wrath of the creature inside me, whipping about and trying to crawl free of me in its death throws. I feel the link to its conscious mind sever, the link broken as it withdraws its talons from my viscera, ending the synergy. More hysterical loquaciousness from the woman with this magical serum, I try to focus on her, but my eyes are not their own. My muscles jump and flex beyond my control, adrenaline pumping through me, my inner organs trying desperately to abort the foreign entity inside of me. I can still sense its desperation, its desire to make me suffer as it was suffering now.
The woman is saying something, over and over, rhythmically, chanting. I found myself at a point where I was piqued on pain, and a pinhole through the darkness opened. From her words, a doorway formed, what once was empty air now all a stir, ripples like that through water vibrated within it, spreading forwards to define its circumference. It seemed to waver in the ether, a veil or portal of sorts being called forth from the woman's incantations. From inside this swirling, forming mass, came a bestial howl, a war cry of fury that squeezed fresh terror into my heart. Louder and louder the woman's words, more elaborate her movements and gesticulations.
Single flash of a vision, of traveling at an extreme speed, of possessing a form so chimerical as to boggle the intellect, as well as the structure of Reality itself. I sensed a rage in that form, an emotion strong and now building up to an explosive force. That rage is what drew it forwards, that need to strike and destroy. I felt those jowls open, the head thrown back in intensity, the issuing forth of a howling scream so repulsive as to make me wish I were deaf... and then: Nothing. The vision was no more.
Back again I found myself, on the floor, dizzy and confused, midsection a fist of furious agony. The thing inside of me was trying to crawl out from my bowels, to dislodge and fight without a host for survival. To do that, it needed to get out of me first, and it paid no thought to the anguish its travel caused me. It crept upwards, meaning to crawl out of my mouth. It was going to choke me to death, I realized, in horror. It would be so easy now, to just let my sanity go, to be free of the ramifications of what I was experiencing.
"Open your mouth!" The woman is now yelling into my ear, over the humming of my mind cacophony. I open my mouth to gasp some air, as the thing from the nexus tears through the threshold. I feel my mind shrink back, not wanting to comprehend. I am not here, I tell myself. I am far away and safe. None of this is real. Yet, I know it is. This dying parasitic infection the Kayden Corporation rooted in me is real. I grit my teeth to chase the memories away. Yes, I know its real. Despite the poison this woman has seduced me into imbibing, I know something unnatural is taking place, some deep wound has been torn in the fabric of Reality, and now it bleeds forth this emerging *thing* which is now borne of the portal.
Its bulk is wide and solid, taught muscles flexed under a leathery hide, which bristled with thick, thorn like hairs. It appears to have no neck, only a massive head with lupine jowls, teeth packed together, over lapping from its nonexistent lips. Broken bone and ligament jut out from the creatures shoulder blades, in mockery of wings. Membrane stretched over torn cartilage, dried out muscles decaying and clotted against the bone, retarding the movements of flapping it tries to make. The legs upon which it stands are bent backward at the joint, resembling those of a bird, ending in cruel, hefty hooves. Yet it is the creatures eyes which are most disturbing, those black, glistening boils of tar, shining and wet, moving. They seem to be pulsating within its head, two blackened blisters swelling with the force of its rage.
The dying thing within me inches its way up my esophagus, choking off my air, gagging me. Bile rises up as well, propelling it forwards. Dear God, its crawling into my mouth! I can taste the coppery burn of blood, feel the acidity of my juices sting me as I vomit forth a damned creature into the world. My eyes swim, I'm choking, I can't breathe! I feel it squirming up, stronger now, a wet and violating muscle squeezing itself free of me to die alone. I feel my jaws expand, about to crack, as another spasm of bile slips from my mouth, dropping what was inside of me for so long to the floor.
The old woman drops to her hands and knees, eyes rabid and concentrated on the dying fiend that is flapping like a dying fish in a pool of bloodied bile. I can not bear to look upon it, to know this thing was inside of me will damn me for sure. Yet I am compelled, and what I see sears my eyes and pierces my soul.
The hell thing resembled a black slug streaked with strings of scarlet, a bulbous mass devoid of form. It pulsates like the eyes of the Demon which stands watching, pulsating in rhythm with the death of the just born. The air hums with the sound of a heartbeat, the rhythm of blood pulsating, swish-swish, swish-swish. The eyes bulging and the hell creature swelling and deflating with each heart beat. Rhythm. Something breaks inside of me. Blackness swarms over me, its insect like fingers snapping consciousness out...
Light explodes into my vision. Time has been lost, spent in the deep void of limbo, safe and unthinking. I am exhausted, shaken, beaten. The light is etching itself onto my eyeballs, too bright. I smell ether and sickness, the aroma of scrubbed walls and bleached steel. The air feels numb and heavy, too full to move. My thoughts multiply in my head until they are insurmountable, feasting on themselves like little cannibals, morphing into more distraught and hellish convictions. My skull aches with the pressure, my thoughts telling me my skull is about to implode.
"Well done, Laura." My name. It's the old woman speaking, that strange foreign voice. How does she know my name? I try to sit up, but I find that I can not, for there are leather straps restraining me to the bed. In each arm, multiple plastic tubes feed an opalescent yellow liquid into my veins. Oh no, oh Gods, it's not over yet.
"Did you really think we would let you get away, Laura? In a laundry cart, of all things. Silly girl. We knew you would try to get away from us, and we could not let that happen. You are smarter and so much easier on the eyes than the others here, and we used that on you." She reaches out a doughy hand as she says this, and cups it to my breast, weighing its mound gingerly. "Your body made you the perfect choice, with the other factors considered. You are ripe and young. The drugs we have given you have made you fertile, your intestines a fecund womb to hold what we have worked so long to create." She exposes my breast lovingly, working at the nipple. I try to scream, but choke instead, tears streaming down my face. She leans over me and places her mouth to my nipple and begins to suck, her tongue moving back and forth in little flicks. I strain against the leather straps, willing my body to break through them. Finally, I scream, the sound coming forth from me ripping my throat with its ferocity. My entire body begins to shake, the spasms throwing the woman off her sucking. She tilts her head back and smiles, milk running out of her mouth.
"Your mothers milk is full of Absinthe. It was the missing link, you see. The Green Demon. You were the innocent one, we could never seduce you. We knew you played a pivotal part in this, with those lusty mammary glands of yours. You fit what we needed for a surrogate mother, but your innocence made you untouchable. So we convoluted things. Slid you drugs that robbed you of memories. Gave you desires by doing nightly rituals, which stripped the innocence off your soul. We let you see things that are forbidden to all mortals, we redeemed you to be something pivotal. We gave you a chance to be the mother of a God, inseminated while drugged with the seed of a demon! It has grown in your bowels, for your womb is a useless sack. It is the Absinthe which binds it to you, it is the Green Blood Of Life that allows these demons to be born for use in our Armies! You will birth them, Laura, you are the chosen Mother of this Army, the first to be given such a privilege! You will suckle them at your breasts, feeding them your laced mothers milk so that they may flourish.!" All the while she was speaking this,.memories came back. The demon from the rippling void entwined in my flesh, impossibly long phallus impaled in me. Recalling the iced black color of its semen as it filled me to overflowing, the way it froze my legs as it spilled out of me. More memories come... chanting and dancing and naked bodies covered in exotic oils, the smell of sex musky and wild under the smoke of the burned offerings.
Laughter now, the woman truly jovial over my discomfort. Her eyes are wide, holing a maniacal, crazed look. She holds my eyes for a moment, then turns to pick up a bundle wrapped in a blue, downy blanket. From this wrapped object comes a strange, strangulated mewling sound which filled my heart with terror. She held it gingerly, looking down upon it as if it were a puppy, or even a human child. I knew what it was that she held, fear driving me to the edge of insanity.
"You are the only one we have capable of this miracle. You will be heralded as the Mother of the Gods, each one precious and indestructible! Can you imagine a weapon, able to morph into both human and demon form? People will come from miles away to see you, the Mother of the Beasts. You can have anything you want, take your proper place in things. Defy us, and you will spend the remainder of your days strapped to this bed, drugged and used any other ways we see fit. This miracle that I hold, your son, has caused celebration. Its father came to witness its birth, as it was borne from your mouth. You don't need to be afraid, you have all the protection you could ever want." from the blanket there came a frantic gurgling scream, the evil within it wriggling about. She reached out with her free hand and tore my shirt in half, exposing my ruby nipples, now swollen and sore. "Your child hungers, you must feed him." I pretended not to hear her, focused on the edges of blackness which tried to seduce me back into the void.
I closed my eyes and my mind to Reality, tried to will myself away. I prayed for Death, sweet and final, an endless cocoon of the Universe... away, away...
Something solid and wet fell across my chest, warm and mewling. If I get out of this, there will be nothing left of me alive. Forgive me, God, forgive me for what I have done, and for what I have become. Courting the will to die, I called out to Him, Azriel, Angel Of Death, tears now leaving a salty trail down my cheeks. Words from somewhere deep and unknown sprang from my lips, uncensored and unafraid I spoke them, my heart ripping with emotions that would make the sane go mad. I was startled when I heard the sound of singing in the room, and that the sound was my own voice, reciting words that sprang to me in my desperation, delivered from the Collective Consciousness of our world and all that lies beyond it. I closed my sensations out, forcing myself to be numb, I wasn't willing to be what I was about to become. I close out the screams of the wretched woman, and the angry blows she strikes across my face, the blood which fills my nose and chokes me, making me gasp to breathe. I am beyond fear now, beyond pain, beyond reach of the monstrosity which seeks to feed at my breast. I will not stop my singing, I cry out with the remains of all that I have left of me, the Truth to powerful to live through. Hell exists, and I have seen It There were no more sounds of wet, obscene nursing now, gone the cruelty of violated flesh, mind and soul. There is no cruel woman trying to tear the lips from my face to quiet the words which angered her so, the song, the Calling Song...
... And my eyes are made to open, my lips cease their movement and speech, the air pauses its breath, the whole world is still. From the stillness comes a stir, a ripple of liquid smoke which starts as a wisp and grows into an inky form. Oh, how my heart rejoices, that even a fallen angel would hear my prayer, the song of the desperate and tortured. There are no more horrors left in me, only relief that this angel has come to bear me away, like a Bride to her grave. I can smell the fear of the old woman, the wretched stink of waste she gave off as she realizes she knows that which she stood in the presence of. He is the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld, suspended and rippling through the air, shaped of tendrils of smoke which moved gracefully although the atmosphere itself is totally motionless. Fully nine feet are his wings, oil black raven feathers glistening with ether. Other than this, His form is erratic, moving within itself to form different shapes and images out of its dark essence. The still air suddenly becomes heavy, too stagnated to breathe, my lungs feeling full of metal. I watch Him as he glides to the woman, without noise or effort, an elongated strand of darkened haze twisting towards her, seeking. I can not turn away as Death's wrath explodes. What most do not know, as I now understand, is that Death has a certain right of Judgment. This Angel may be fallen, but He has the power to bring Death in any way He deems fit. He smells the wreak of Fear from the screeching woman, seeks to see into her heart. It is because of my song that he came, the passion for which I sang for Him. He has come to deliver me, of this I am well certain. I know the wickedness and terror of the old lady intrigues him, knowing that she is part of the reason I sang for Him. Amazing to me, that she holds her ground, does not back off as Death approaches her. Never taking her eyes from the oncoming, she speaks to me.
"Death can not save you, Laura. You are equal to Death, esoteric as is He. When you were in your gestational period, because of the nature of that which you held, it has made you immune. Funny, that Death would have answered your call, All Knowing Being that He is. He must have been touched." She throws back her head, hysterical giggles and gurgles issuing forth in a twisted form of laughter. I focus my blurred eyes on the mighty figure of Death, back turned to me and wings gigantic, exposed in full, reminding my savaged senses of the hood of a cobra preparing for the Killing Strike. The tendril continues its reach further, never faltering in its path. The air turns to static, worlds opening and closing before me, mirrors of rippling doorways broken into the Realm of The Real. From these cracks in the Veil, scuttling, clacking sounds emerge, a massive wave of identical sounds magnified into a crescendo. The aura around Death intensifies, growing darker and more severe, pooling as if he were both smoke and ink at once, billowing and twisting within Himself, expanding. From the portals, loud ripples of sparks, crackling as they solidified, the noise of an endless number of insects chirping. At first, there was only one, and then many beetle like creatures, running out from the portals, mandibles working together, creating that mind penetrating clacking chirp which vibrates through out the room. Some strengthened part of me, in a thin moment of conscious recognition, thought that they were scarabs, the Egyptian symbol of immortality, the Beginning and the End.
"Death has not come for me, Old weary hag, He has come for you." I hear myself say this, my voice somehow reverberating and amplified above the thrum of the ravenous insects. They come now, swarming in a thick, moving rug, billions of legs scuttle, millions of mandibles clash. Like a plague, they swarm upon her, piercing her flesh, gouging her eyes, filling her mouth and eating their way into her stomach. She stands for only a brief moment, her flesh now gone, her body only supported by the mass of carapace armored scarabs stuck into the spaces between her bones. After the last sinew has been eaten, she falls to the ground, an empty husk, her soul delivered to Judgment. Mission completed, the insects withdraw, returning into the rippling gate. Death returns to me, not to claim me, but to look upon me, to understand my wishes.
Its all been washed away, it has, the Pain, the Fear, the Terror. I have ridden through the void of insanity, and I remain alive. Gone my thoughts of innocence, now obscured by ferocious intent. Absinthe running through my veins, the mixed seed and blood changing my cells and brain, clarifying the nature of the heart which is now beating in my breast. I have seen the zenith of torture, and once that point is reached, there is no return. Death's eyes gleam before me, drinking in the incoherent babblings of my mind. I must find some understanding in this place of Horrors, this den of Hell. I know I will not escape, I am not fit for this world. The dying embers of my consciousness, my inner voice, flicker once before my eyes, before it is snuffed out by the rage magnetizing in my blood. I am Becoming Mother of the Damned. It is unavoidable, I am beyond the help of Death. His retreat is graceful, tendrils folded together in a prayer like clasp, head lowered, wings folded. The static which surrounds him fades out, until he is translucent as smoke. Through his transparent form, I see the opening of the ethereal cell. As death retreats, another presence advances. He is coming forth for me, that which was once entwined with me. How could I recoil from this magnificent being? From the son which I had helped to create, the elite Demi-God which suckled at my breast even now, taking in the Absinthe from my milk? I have mated with a powerful, otherworldly force, I am the Bride of the Damned. Death has left, oh sweet, sweet Death! He is righteous in his actions, and Blessed by his presence was I. I shall scream no more, 'less it be in rapture, my mental bonds broken and forever torn, body ravaged and changing, sexual organs modifying to allow the consummation of myself with the Demon.
I did not notice a pause in time before the demon is beside me. His presence does not alarm me as it had before, but fills me with longing and acceptance. With a claw the size of a coffin nail, he shears through the leather restraints, His wings so gloriously decrepit spread wide to enfold me, his Bride, mother of His child. My loins glimmer in my desire, dew drops forming at the opening. I am where I am meant to be at last, I know, as the demon enters me violently, lovingly. The child at my breast flows in its form, human like eyes appearing, then melting back into sluggish flesh, to be replaced by bulbous eyes, like those of his Father. A nose and fingers appear and disappear, the Absinthe charging his system. As the demon works to his purpose, I smile, knowing the infant which feeds eager at my bosom will not be the last, but the first of many...
... Many in the Army Of the Damned.