Beast of Darkness = 574 = Breeding Abominations
Beast of Darkness = 574 = Breeding Abominations
I drowned beneath the imposing volume of the outside world, no less morbid than the torture from which I’d come. A dense black void emerged from my throat and pressed itself against my skull, cursing me with glossy-eyed anhedonia. I had no foresight nor hopes for where time would lead me, so long as time had not been beaten and dismembered. The moment that gripped me and pinned me to its surface was one of many—blacked out and untelling.
The night sky hung dead and moonless like black wings mantling the universe. Rigid constructs loomed overhead, restricting my vision to narrow tunnels and alleys between, staring at me through eyes of dusted glass. And from above them gazed the beady eyes of crows, watching in anticipation of my death—so that they and the rats scuttling below could feast on my carcass. I wondered whether I’d been born into eternal damnation or if the distance between earth and hell had grown too shallow, its effluence creeping over.
I took a step in whatever direction I happened to be aligned—bolts of pain shooting from my ankles to my hips—and began walking aimlessly. The earth’s cobblestone tumors abraded the wounds in my bare feet, leaving a trail of blood wherever they happened to stumble. My eyes rolled around in my skull, searching instinctively for any sort of guidance or salvation, though I expected no such thing from a world so cruel.
From the sky arose a smear of red—perhaps the moon caught in the earth’s sanguine umbra—or a laceration in the wings that suffocated us. I squinted my eyes as the smear dilated, shifting and squirming at its edges, rotating like a tadpole in a fetid pond. The spawn grew exponentially in both size and detail, its fluid shadows indicating that this was no solid object but instead a mass of blood suspended among the aether.
In hardly a moment the swirling liquid nearly spanned the entire atmosphere, rivers of gore sloshing and racing around its hollowed locus. Even at such a distance I could hear its torrents rumbling like crashing waves, warning of a thunderous calamity.
As though it could no longer contain its bloated mass, the vortex began to weep. A storm of blood descended and crashed over me with a prolonged aqueous slam, furiously ejaculating its contents over the earth. A dense scarlet mist smothered my vision as metallic vapor filled my airways. And even as I covered my head in shock, the storm did not yield. Chunks of entrails splattered as they collided with the ground, bones shattering on impact, the once eerie silence banished by a squelching cacophony. This tempest was undoubtedly an ill omen—foretelling the end of days—though conducted with flesh and blood instead of fire and brimstone.
What little sky remained uncovered was not free of corruption, instead flushed a dark crimson by the arterial effluence of hell. The heavens had torn themselves open with suicidal rage, revealing gaping, bloodshot eyes that watched the apocalypse with indifference.
And just above where the sky’s edge met the city’s roofs was the face I’d been expecting—the moon. A pair of dispirited faces had twisted themselves out of its surface, their pale skin now bloodstained. One hemisphere lay stretched—pulled skin-tight by hooks and blades as it bared its teeth in delirium. Its sibling buckled against the expansion, face sobbing and contorted.
Whether suffering or indulging—chasing or being chased—my humanity did not extend beyond the ability to feel pain. I asked myself why I hadn’t brought myself peace, finding no answer, aware that death was waiting with open arms just beyond the razor-wired fence of courage.
I remembered the glass shard still clamped between my fingers, feeling that there was no better time for masturbation. And so I dug its edge into my forearm, savoring the rush once more. Even as my torso wobbled with each precarious step I persisted in my slicing, trying to push and pull with consistent force. Agony pulsed and sizzled across my flesh until I abandoned all care and simply impaled myself at a whim, sobbing in pain as pleasure washed over it.
Soon I was blinded by the gore trickling down my face, mixing with my own tears, no longer caring if I cut deep enough to sever an artery and end my life. Visceral rage filled my skull until its walls burst, reality clouded into a matrix that bounced and twisted like hanging corpses. Through the veil of falling gore my arm appeared a butchered animal, gushing from its disfigured anatomy, and I wished to do nothing more than sever thick chunks of flesh until I saw bone from the elbow down.
The rattling of metal subtly pierced through the storm, and I wiped a layer of cold blood from my eyes. Moving opposite to my stumbling was a line of bare-chested beings, their heads encased by avian plague masks, beating their own backs with chains and whips.
For the first time in my existence I’d encountered life in my own shape—distinct from the crows despite their volucrine beaks. And it seemed the only beings in this world that did not spread disease nor eat corpses were the corpses themselves. This was a realm of endless pain—a system that cannot exist without a purveyor and a victim of suffering. The buildings at my shoulders groaned in agony, gargling on their own blood, and the streets cried as feet scraped along their skin. Pain fell from the sky and pooled on the ground, growing ever higher until the surface could not be reached before drowning.
The wandering line had already passed me, yet through the groaning emanation of bleeding skies I heard footsteps beating the cobblestone behind me. I twisted my neck to see one of the creatures sprinting through the mist, chain held overhead in preparation to swing.
Terror seized my body long before reason, and I found myself running frantically. Blood splashed over my face as I squinted to avoid total blindness, musculature pulsing with the hysterical tremor of my heart. My flesh crawled as I felt its bladed chain creeping ever closer, imagining my own skin fraying at the hands of another. The creature let out a grunt muffled by its leather visard, and my fears burst through the fragile lining between mind and reality, a succession of sharp pains ripping across my shoulder blades.
My wishes for death persisted as she displayed herself—materialized in my realm through means other than broken glass on my skin. She caressed my face and looked at me in my lifeless eyes, promising an eternal world of emptiness without pain, yet fear gripped too tightly for me to submit.
I’d been graced by death’s lips and still sprinted away with every remaining trace of zeal. The shift from hot, visceral existence to total darkness shook me to my guts, leaving me clawing at my own head for why I couldn’t accept such permanent measures. All I could taste was blood and my tears when she kissed me.