by Brant Danay
The Oneirophage dreamed of orchards whose trees bore living heads on their branches. He dreamed of cannibals binging and purging on demon flesh, eating hundreds of bodies at one single feast, vomiting after each one was consumed and then eating another, and then lapping up the vomit when the feast was gone. At one point, the Oneirophage dreamt he was one of the gluttonous cannibals; at another, he dreamt it was his own flesh being torn away, chewed, swallowed, regurgitated, and drunk again. He dreamed in succession that he was devouring males, females, children, fetuses, and embryos, and then drinking sperm from their hollowed out skulls. He then dreamt this same dream in reverse order, first imbibing the sperm from severed heads, and then eating embryos, fetuses, children, females, and males.
An hour later, the Oneirophage woke once more. He had stopped bleeding, but he was still scorched and ripped. He had not only lost a lot of blood, but a lot of flesh, as well. The Oneirophage spun the Umbilicus in his fingers until it became as a singular straw again, this time with two wide ends like those of a vacuum. He attached one of the tips to a carcass beside him and the other to a long gash on his chest. The deep cut wrapped itself around the Umbilicus like a pair of lips, and then the wound itself began to suckle, moving and controlling the laceration just like a mouth. The Umbilicus trembled and vibrated, vacuuming up the skin, flesh, muscle, and organs from the bones of the cadaver and redepositing it upon and inside the Oneirophage. For an hour, the Dreaming Predator used this gruesome technique to repair his injuries, his every wound a suctorial organ. The surgical Umbilicus performed skin grafts and flesh transplants, reducing the mass grave of demon amputees to a golgotha of pelvises, ribs, spines, skulls, fangs, claws, and horns, their bones sucked as clean as if they had been devoured by starving cannibals who hadn't eaten in centuries.
Exhausted, the Oneirophage closed his eyes and slept once more. He dreamed of eating Satan's penis, its barbs tearing holes in his cheeks and catching on his three forked tongues. Satan’s blood and sperm were like lava in his mouth and throat, and his crimson flesh tasted like raw meat panaceas and flaming hot ambrosia. Satan watched the Oneirophage's sadomasochistic communion fantasy in Hell, spying upon the ophidian demon's dreams, laughing in his brimstone lungs and then exhaling clouds of black smoke.
"Serpentling", spake Satan, with a voice like a supernova, "Sweet slitherer, you are my slave. Soon, you will be mine in Hell, and I shall cut you apart and make a penis of your lower half, you who would devour mine..."
The Oneirophage lifted his face from Satan's crotch, a deep crimson staining his lips and face in a circle around his mouth. Blood dribbled and dripped through his prism-plaited beard. Rearing back like a cobra, the Oneirophage gazed upon the half-eaten phallus of his Satanic master. The left side had been chewed to the groin, and the entire tip was gone. Where crimson skin pulled back from scarlet pulp, blood and sperm dripped unevenly, like froth from the broken jaw of a rabid wolf. Satan laughed again as the Oneirophage pulled farther back into the shadows, the smell of brimstone and the echoes of madness following him long after Satan himself was out of sight. Finally retreating all the way back to his bedchambers, the Oneirophage fell into the healing sleep of a shaman. Satan's presence remained in the room with him for the rest of the night, hovering over his body and watching him dream like a voyeuristic incubus.
*
The Oneirophage awoke again before dawn. Raising himself from his gore-stained blankets, he glanced around his bedchamber and found that he had completely skeletonized his prey. Skulls and bones bore straw-marks similar to the teeth marks left on meatless bones by ravenous carnivores. Even their organs had been devoured. He would have to take his breakfast from the Flesh Reservoir, a small slaughterhouse within the prism palace where he kept a supply of extra victims for emergencies.
Despite the closure of his wounds and the renewal of his vitality, he found many of his tattoos to be tattered, the old skin hanging from his new flesh like cobwebs, or sometimes in entire sheets of disconnected epidermis. Following his visit to the Flesh Reservoir, he would have to visit the Alcoves of Exuviation and the Tattoo Laboratory.
Grabbing his Darkprism, the Oneirophage traveled through a bloodstained labyrinth of carved prism. Every color of the spectrum flashed through the air, but many now had a reddish tinge to them, for the half-clotted blood left upon the floor the previous night was like a trail of gelid rubies, little jewels reaching with red shafts of light into the shimmering air.
The Oneirophage made his way to the Flesh Reservoir on the top story, an elongated, rectangular chamber where thick rows of meathooks hung on adamantium chains. Five of the meathooks held demons, each impaled through a different body part. The Oneirophage slithered into the abattoir. A bald ogre, dangling upside-down from a gaping wound in the middle of his back, became the Oneirophage's first victim. The Oneirophage's jaws unhinged like a boa constrictor's, his mouth opening to a grotesquely large size, completely enwombing the head of his victim. He swallowed the ogre whole, leaving only a rustling chain and a dripping meathook behind.
He glided to the next victim, an azure and black succubus hung by the vagina, and devoured her piece by piece, in seven massive bites. His stomach felt warm with the fresh meat and blood, alive with a pleasurable nausea as it rapidly digested whole carcasses in minutes, completely absorbing their every cell. Digestive fluids being the basis from which venom had evolved in serpents, their efficacy was often reflective of the toxicity of their owner's poisons, and those of the Oneirophage were akin to corrosive acid.
The dreams of his victims were coursing pleasantly through his head as he finished his breakfast, consuming another succubus, this one tiger-striped and suspended in mid-air by the gold rings in her twenty nipples. He swallowed a wailing infant impaled through the fontanel and, lastly, ripped the genitals from a purple incubus dangling by its cervix and devoured them, then drank the blood that came pouring forth. Now fully nourished, the Oneirophage left the rest of the still-living, freshly-castrated demon to be eaten at a later time.
The Oneirophage prepared to shed his skin. He exited the Flesh Reservoir and made his way down the hall to the Alcoves of Exuviation. He gathered a handful of diamond nails from a secret compartment next to the door, then slithered into an octagonal chamber adorned with seven upside-down crucifixes. Each cross had been carved from a single jewel and represented a different color of the spectrum. An eighth inverted crucifix, one of obsidian, hung upon the door. The room consisted of a large platform whose edges ended a couple of feet from the walls, with another room visible below. A catwalk extended from the door to the platform. The Oneirophage slid across this catwalk to the upside-down emerald cross in the alcove directly ahead of him. The crucifix had four emerald chains as well, one from every end, bolted to the floor, the ceiling, and the stained glass walls slanting from the back of the alcove. The stained glass was alive with artwork, depicting the violent and sexual acts of several species of demons. Taking the lengths of green chain in his hands, the Oneirophage lowered the emerald crucifix onto the octagonal platform and placed it horizontally upon the floor, then lay upon it in a supine position.
He placed the diamond nails inside the Umbilicus, point-first, one after the other. He assumed a cruciform posture, shoulders, arms, hands, and fingers stretched out upon the crosspiece. The opposite end of the Umbilicus divided into three parts and snaked across his body, until two of its circular tips pushed firmly against his flattened palms and the third pressed into the bottom of his tail. The Oneirophage blew into the Umbilicus, and an instant later his left hand had been impaled by one of the diamond nails. He exhaled again and his right hand was likewise skewered, and then a third time, driving the final nail through the tip of his tail. The Umbilicus then withdrew itself from his mouth, and the Oneirophage spoke a susurrating mantra. The emerald crucifix lurched and raised back off the ground, to hang upside-down from the ceiling while the other three chains secured it to the floor and the stained glass walls. The viridescent c
ross swung into midair, then held fast.
Crucified on an upside-down cross, streams of blood descending from his tail to his torso, the Oneirophage began to wriggle his serpentine body. The small ridges and facets of the crucifix caught against the grooves of his scales, and by catching his flesh against them he was able to shed the snakeskin of his lower half, writhing until it had completely detached from the flesh beneath. The demonskin of his upper half followed, as the pull of the snakeskin nailed to the end of the crucifix above began to shake loose.
The Oneirophage slithered in place on the cross, now beginning to slide down its length, his face, shoulders, and chest disappearing behind the ledge of the platform as they penetrated the chamber below. With continuous thrusts his head drew closer to the ground, the skin above him hanging in thin sheets, like the multicolored parchment of a necronomicon written on serpent vellum. His palms dragged themselves through the diamond nails in their centers, ripping the flesh with rivulets of blood that formed helices around his outstretched arms. He slipped downward several inches at a time now, tugging at the skin of his face and then pulling it off with one complete tear. The tip of his tail disappeared from the octagonal chamber, snaking down the final length of the cross. As though emerging from a womb or a caul, the Oneirophage left his skin behind him like hanging afterbirth, and gracefully slithered, upside-down, into the Gallery of Snakeskins below.
The Oneirophage pulled his shed skin from the upside-down cross. The removal triggered a shift in the upper alcoves, each moving to the left so that the topaz crucifix now occupied the wall he had just descended from. Holding his warm, dripping peelings in both hands, the Oneirophage glanced around the Gallery of Snakeskins. It was a mazelike basilica, a convolution of hallways, vestibules, foyers, rotundas, and antechambers, wherein all the snakeskins the Oneirophage had ever shed were displayed like paintings. Several eons' worth of decortication were exhibited in this labyrinth, a visual akashic record chronicling the Dreaming Predator's entire existence. The Oneirophage hung his new, fresh, dripping piece of artwork upon one of the walls, then slithered from the Gallery of Snakeskins to the Tattoo Laboratory across the hall, to repaint arabesque grimoire which was his flesh.
The Tattoo Laboratory, like the Flesh Reservoir, housed a small number of living demons to be utilized when necessary. Four victims, chained to walls, floor, ceiling, tables, and each other, were hooked up to vast syringes by gargantuan hypodermic needles. These needles, in turn, were interlinked with other strawlike devices to form one continuous network throughout the chamber, designed to draw forth pigments, toxins and inner liquids simultaneously. The lengthy and humongous needles were inserted at various points upon each victim's body, to siphon specifically colored bodily fluids. Needles were driven into hearts, jugular veins, carotid arteries, aortas, wounds, and menstruating vaginas for red blood. They vertically penetrated the urethras of penises for white sperm and the nipple-holes of breasts for white milk. Vertebrae were pierced for white spinal fluids; bones and skeletons for brown and yellow marrow; livers and stomachs for green bile. Heads were impaled through eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and various parts of the skull, tapping the brains inside for the rainbow colors of dreams. Hollow dragon dildos were inserted in vaginas, swelling with amnion, afterbirth, and the drippings of venereal diseases. The Tattoo Laboratory was a menagerie of torture.
The Oneirophage stood between two rows of syringes in the nexus of the Tattoo Laboratory, ceremonial mask in hand. A diabolical, dark green sculpture configured to create artwork with the expulsions of the gore it absorbed, the mask consisted of a long, hollow, drilling needle in the form of a lizard’s tail, topped by a five-headed serpent in the form of a pentagram. The fanged mouths of the serpent formed the points of the upside-down star and jutted beyond their shared circle of coils. The snakeheads, in turn, surrounded the pentahedral head of a dragon, which wore them like a crown. The dragon’s snout extended forward into a mouthpiece, with hooked teeth and a hollow, tubular, forked tongue between its adjustable jaws. Two large syringes of pale, transparent jade formed lungs on either side, pulsating like gills, air bladders, and air sacs. Green tendrils protruded and dangled in all directions from its bottom, forming needle-tipped tentacles capable of being joined with the various tubes throughout the room, interlinked with the Umbilicus, or used individually. When attached to his face, the contraption was an exact replica of the monstrous chthonic parasite which had inspired its creation, and whose power it invoked whenever it was adorned by the initiated.
The Oneirophage wore the ceremonial mask as a breathing device, a sacred effigy composed of verdigrised iron, green crystal, and jade that unleashed the powers of the chthonic, the serpentine, and the Satanic simultaneously. The five snakes which formed the points of the pentacle were equipped with barbed forked tongues that hooked into the skin of his face. Two embedded themselves in his scalp, two more bit down around each ear slit, and one clenched its maxillae and mandibles together in the soft flesh underneath his mouth, between chin and throat. From their five-sided nexus protruded the mouthpiece, the crocodilian dragon head which opened on jawlike hinges to engulf his nose and mouth like a respirator, hooked fangs digging into his orbital bones, cheeks, jaws, and chin to hold the device in place. Its hollow forked tongue reached halfway down his throat once the mask was adorned, in a manner like tantric ophidian fellatio, its twin bifurcations respectively inserting themselves into both his esophagus and trachea.
Gazing through the two pyramid-shaped holes formed by the straight coils of the twin serpents biting his upper forehead and hairline, the Oneirophage breathed through the dragonhead, and the lung-syringes bubbled around him. Long dripping needles glistened from the ends of the green tentacles as they were inserted into a hundred-tipped labyrinthine incarnation of the Umbilicus and the various tubes, straws, syringes, and victims throughout the Tattoo Laboratory. The gigantic hypodermic needle in the form of a long, slightly curled lizard tail began to vibrate and drip colors. Rhythmically breathing in and out through the device, the Oneirophage repainted his body, inhaling gore and exhaling tattoos.
The Tattoo Laboratory gurgled and churned as the organic warpaint was ritually extracted, and the screams of the tormented were thick in the air as the Oneirophage imbibed their bodily fluids. The myriad syringes bulged and roiled, and it was as though the Oneirophage meditated in the middle of an apothecary's pleasure chamber. All the vital fluids of life and death had been mixed into warpaint, in infinite combinations to create the right tinctures and shading. With dark voodoo instruments, lungs like Siamese twin creatrixes, and three dexterous forked tongues, the Oneirophage orally tattooed his body for the hunt, inhaling mutilation and exhaling artwork. Black horned skulls were drawn upon each of his shoulders, containing the powers of a two-headed demon he had slain in a bygone age. Spiderwebbing stretched all the way down his left arm and onto his left hand, with various prey struggling in its deadly mesh. His right arm bore a red incubus and three succubi making love, the demonesses wrapped around their lover's thighs, torso and throat just like the tattoo itself wrapped around the Oneirophage's wrist, forearm, and bicep. Crimson, beating hearts surrounded his eye sockets. His bottom penis was tattooed like a serpent, with diamondback patterns of dark emerald and ruby and obsidian, and ending with the head of a black mamba with a forked tongue drawn in crimson beneath the tip, as though it were flicking in and out of the urethra. His upper penis was entirely covered by a tattoo of Satan, which frequently shifted like a sentient creature. Sometimes the underside of the Oneirophage's phallus bore the face; sometimes the top. No matter its position, the tattoo of Satan was eternally looking on with glowing eyes and glinting fangs, horns wrapped around the glans and wisps of smoke adorning the small urethral opening, muscular arms diagonally crossed, claws slanting above his shoulders, his barbed phallus leaking fire and lava below. The serpentine lower half of the Oneirophage's body was covered in runes and mandalas of all shades of color, just like the scales and snakeskin th
ey adorned. Satan's red image overlooking them from above had the effect of roaring flames, making the patterns flicker and flash.
The tattoo that covered his entire chest and back was a psychedelic monstrosity. One single, gruesomely malformed torture device stretched across his entire torso, a hideous machine that did the work of an entire torture chamber at once. It had been christened Torturoth by the Oneirophage, who had dreamed of its ultimate incarnation every night since early childhood. For now just a vividly lifelike tattoo, Torturoth was seamlessly conjoined, a mutant torture device spreading across the Dreaming Predator's torso, abdomen, and back like a disease or a genetic disorder, a labyrinth of suffering. Sentient, the great torture machine performed its own punishments, inquisitions, bondages, sadomasochisms, and executions. Each device was like a body part, dependent upon and connected to all the others like organs and flesh. Torture racks flowed into iron maidens, which streamed into garrotes, which cascaded into gallows. Masticators with great dripping jaws gave birth to guillotines, which grew into torture wheels, which copulated with crucifixes. Flesh ovens bubbled like tumors, whips and chains stretched like scars, impaling devices erected like phalluses, constricting devices irised like vaginas. All were adorned with writhing, screaming victims, the tattoos of demons and beasts he had conquered and slain over the millennia, their blood running along the entire twisted mechanism, each torture bleeding into the ones surrounding it, each victim bleeding into one another. Everything was joined like flesh, like skin, muscle, and bone, like umbilical cords. Like one hundred congenitally joined twins, like a tantric orgy, like a living labyrinth, the grotesquely intricate torture device was one amalgamated entity. The mutant horde of mechanical dominatrixes, sadomasochistic implements, and helpless victims were all at one with each other, a communal society, a communal paradise of pain, a communal utopia of torture chambers.