Cora sighed. She took his hand and rubbed her thumb across his fingers. “He’s with Krystal. He was special to her, just as you are special to me. Our special ones are taken to the basement to meet Mother Iris. Come.”
“In the basement? I don’t understand. Why—”
Her lips pressed against his, and for an instant, he forgot about the pain coursing down his thighs and the fear racing through his mind. For that moment, there was only Jim and Cora, a quiet center of the universe separate from the pain and confusion of the world. Her tongue darted into his mouth, accompanied by the metallic taste of soil, and Jim wanted to pull away—but he didn’t.
A sickening warmth overcame him in that moment, filling his head with desire and displacing thoughts of Megan and Nick. A single thought swam through the empty spaces of his mind: This is what it’s like to be wanted. He opened his eyes and lost himself in the subtle glow of Cora’s violet gaze.
Their lips parted, and Jim felt himself lean forward for more. He wanted more. He needed to taste her one more time, but she wouldn’t let him. Cora looked away and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry we couldn’t spend more time together, Jim. Come with me.” He tried to kiss her again, but she held him back. “I insist,” she said.
Jim tried to lean in once more but paused when he saw they had an audience. The other girls from the study watched from the doorway, their cheeks swollen with light green veins, their violet eyes glowing in the dim light.
“Harvest him, sister. Complete the reconciliation.”
Cora closed her eyes. Green tears spilled down her cheeks. “I know, sisters. I know.” She tugged at his hand. “Come, Jim. It’s time you met our mother.”
***
Cora led the way down the basement stairs. The walls were aged and cracked, and a thick musty smell of soil permeated the air. Jim hesitated in the doorway as he stared down into the dim abyss, his heart rapping so hard against his chest that he had trouble catching his breath. Part of him wanted to find a way out of this. There was a voice somewhere in the back of his mind, screaming like a frightened child, begging for him to find Nick and—
Forget Nick, whispered a voice. It was soft and soothing yet spoke with authority. Come to me, child. Let me look at your beautiful face.
Jim pivoted, turning back to the kitchen where the other sorority sisters watched. They looked less human now. More green veins rose to the surface of their porcelain skin, their violet eyes bulged, and small gray tendrils snaked and flirted around their arms and necks. They stared at him with rabid urgency. One of them even licked her lips.
“Go on,” she said.
“Meet our mother,” said another.
“Jim, come with me.”
He turned back and looked down the stairwell. Cora stood at the landing, peering up with her hand held out to him. The tears had aged her face, filling in every crack and crevasse, giving her cheeks a pale green complexion. He remembered Krystal’s face when she met them at the doorway: a façade of beauty.
He felt hands trace the back of his neck and shoulders; he felt the hot, soiled breath of the others at his ears, their flirtatious voices whispering, “Go, sweetie. Go.”
Drunk on their words, he took Cora’s hand, and they went down the last set of steps together. Another large, velvet curtain hung from the basement ceiling, cordoning off the rest of the room from the stairs.
“Mother Iris,” Cora announced, “we’ve come to pay you a visit. I have a special one for you. The last of tonight’s harvest to complete the reconciliation.”
She drew back the curtain, revealing a large space illuminated with bright UV lights and a large, bulbous thing planted in its center.
The world Jim thought he knew was already shaken that night, its foundations cracked by almost having his penis ripped off by a mutant plant-woman. What he saw waiting for him just beyond the threshold of that room finished the job, sending his concept of reality teetering into an endless, blackened void.
Until that moment, Jim Auster hadn’t considered the possibility that Nick might have suffered a similar fate as those unfortunate young men just one floor above. He didn’t know what he expected to do when he found Nick. Persuade him to leave? Had he been so naïve as to think that would actually work?
Nick was dead, of course. Jim could tell from the way his roommate’s deflated limbs were sticking out of the creature’s maw. The only identifiable part of him was the tribal tattoo on his twitching, bloody arm. Nick’s other limbs were folded side by side in a sick display of human origami, his remains soaked in a viscous, green fluid secreted from the jaws of the monster that claimed him.
Standing at the threshold, staring at what he presumed was Mother Iris, Jim Auster heard her sweet voice in his mind, urging him to let go. Let it happen, she cooed. Just let it happen. I want you to be one with us, child. Complete our harvest.
A wall holding back the last of his sanity crumbled to dust. The sensation was slight, subtle, as the rest of his sanity seeped away through the cracks. He suddenly felt very small and very young, like a child having wandered across the borders of a dense, dark forest. Here, he was lost among a tangle of underbrush, and the sweetest voice was calling his name, calling him home.
The dark green bulb that had devoured Nick’s last remains was bisected down the middle; it split in half for just a moment, revealing seemingly endless rows of sharp thorns, their amber color tainted with a hint of scarlet. Surrounding the bulb were large, vibrant petals that fluttered erratically, filling the room with an anxious rustling noise that made his ears itch. To either side of the flowery mass was a human leg bent at the knee, the flesh a fractured pattern of dark green veins, the muscles bulging and convulsing in time with the rustling petals. Jim’s mind finally caught up to his senses, and he realized he wasn’t looking at two disembodied legs. No, the legs and the flower-bulb thing were connected to the same mass.
His stomach lurched as realization struck, and he opened his mouth to scream, but no words came to him. Instead, his mind shrieked for him: She’s giving birth to that thing.
Mother Iris lay on her back, legs spread and exposed to the room, but she wasn’t giving birth to the creature protruding from her vagina. The flower was a part of her, used to satiate her divine hunger for centuries, feasting on the blood and bones of other hapless men drawn into her trap, their sweat and lust and semen a delicacy to her taste buds.
Krystal appeared from behind the writhing creature. She was nude, her body pockmarked with leafy wounds oozing that same viscous green fluid. Her breasts peeled back, blooming into patches of swirling vines and small, violet flowers. A thick, green tendril coiled out from behind Mother Iris and wrapped around Krystal’s legs, inching its way up her body with the ease of a python. A small, green nozzle at the tip of the vine latched onto the purple flower in Krystal’s hair, enveloping the petals in its trunk and fusing to her head.
A second green tentacle lurched out of the flickering shadows and beckoned. Cora stepped away from him and walked willingly across the room. She bowed her head, welcoming the elephant-like trunk as it wrapped around her thin body, wrinkling her dress. There was an audible shurp sound as the tendril latched onto her like a leech.
Both girls went limp as the appendages lifted them off their feet, twirling them in the air like dolls. Their eyes drained of color, transforming into the milky-white of cataracts, and their mouths flapped open and shut as Mother Iris tested their muscles. They were a part of her now, and when Mother Iris spoke, she did so through their vocal cords.
“Come to me, child. Let us have a look at you.”
Jim wanted to run, but a voice from within suggested the impossible, the insane: Why not stay? His feet were unwilling to move, and for each moment he stared into the many eyes of this monstrosity, the desire to remain intensified, building to a slow crescendo with each successive heartbeat. He forgot about the prickling pain in his groin—that was just a flaw of the flesh, and what good would that be to him if he could become part of somet
hing divine?
The bulb curled open and excreted one of Nick’s loafers. The damp shoe was covered in gelatinous ooze. It plopped on the ground before Mother Iris. Jim stared at that shoe, a part of him horrified while another part coveted Nick’s place within the goddess.
“Take me,” he muttered. A chill ran through his body, and he lowered his gaze, for he was unworthy. Everything he held dear and hoped for until that moment—school, family, losing his virginity, the girl he thought he wanted—now seemed so trivial. He was but a grain of sand at the edge of a vast ocean, and Mother Iris was a sailor of those strange, wondrous waters.
“Take me with you,” he said. His hands trembled.
Mother Iris considered his proposal, her tendrils swaying in the air, carrying Cora and Krystal like marionettes.
“Do you seek our glory?”
Jim fell to his knees. He wiped tears from his eyes and bowed his head. “I want to be with you, Mother. Please take me with you.”
The crack in his mind splintered further, separating his heart from all manner of logic. The reasonable part of him, that screaming young man tucked away in the shadows of his mind, grew distant, shrinking away as he became blinded by the glory of Demeter’s daughter.
The bulb split wide open and flared its prickly thorns. A long, slender vine protruded from the center of the leafy maw and inched its way across the floor toward him. He closed his eyes and relinquished himself to Mother Iris. The tendril curled around his wrist and began to pull. Inch by inch, Jim Auster was dragged to his fate, a destination to which he would have gone willingly.
Within a moment, he would be a part of something greater. He would never again feel rejection or sorrow. There was only the warm bliss of acceptance, his mind lost forever amidst the nettles and thorns, his flesh devoured sweetly within the belly of a living goddess.
WHEN KAREN MET HER MOUNTAIN
-1-
Karen Singleton’s daddy once told her, “Honey, sometimes things just happen and there’s nothin’ to be done about it.” That was thirty years ago, when she was little enough to sit on his knee. “When there’s a mountain in your way, you either climb over it, or find a way around it. There ain’t no in-between.”
Walking through the Arizona desert along Route 93, her favorite Sunday dress stained a dark shade of ruby, Karen finally realized her daddy was right all those years ago. Squinting, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the rising sun, Karen kept on walking down that dusty stretch of highway. Her feet ached. She looked down at bare toes caked in sand and blood, wondering when she’d lost her shoes.
Sometimes things just happen.
Karen cracked a smile and began to laugh in quick, hoarse bursts. Her voice sounded like a dying mule, the thought of which made her laugh even more. She clutched the hatchet and wiped the chipped blade with the hem of her dress. Daddy once told her a dull blade wouldn’t cut anything, but he was wrong about that.
Daddy wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t be right all the time.
-2-
“—Your father never much cared for me, anyway.”
Karen opened her eyes to a dusty brown expanse of desert sage and tumbleweeds slipping by in a blur. Her face’s reflection in the dirty window depicted a tired woman, a mourning woman. Dr. Martin Singleton hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left her daddy’s funeral, and after the day she’d had, all she wanted was to go someplace quiet. Someplace far away from here, from the deserts of her youth and the complacency of middle age.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Karen tilted her head away from the window and nodded. She closed her eyes, swallowed a pool of saliva on the back of her tongue, and patted his knee. Martin glanced at her, frowning.
“Your therapist says it’s best you talk about these things, Karen. So you don’t, you know . . . ”
Relapse. He didn’t say it, but then again he didn’t have to. She knew all too well, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to talk about her daddy’s funeral.
She hadn’t spoken to her daddy all that much in the last years of his life, a fact she regretted as each mile quickly slipped away, lost to the desert behind them. Daddy was a hard man to live with; his dedication to the church had driven her away, first to college and then into the arms of an atheist, but she still loved the old man. He provided for her, cared for her, loved her in his own way. In hindsight, Karen supposed that was why she’d been drawn to Martin in the first place: he reminded her of her father, in some ways.
Martin was right, though—her daddy never did care for him much.
Any boy who walks away from God’s glory is trouble. You watch yourself, honey. I’ll never forgive him if he breaks your heart.
Karen smiled. Even her daddy, Pastor Marlon Ellis, could be blinded sometimes. Martin’s devotion never faltered, not after her miscarriage, not even after the accident that followed. Daddy was wrong about Martin, and Karen’s heart ached when she realized she’d never be able to tell him that.
Martin leaned back against the headrest and sighed. “Karen, you need to talk to me eventually. You can’t keep these things bottled up inside.”
“I’m fine,” she said. The terse response was almost mechanical, an instinctual reaction driven by necessity. Martin was right, but for now she just wanted to remain inside her own head. Confronting her sadness always ended in tragedy.
Karen turned back to the window, watching the emptiness of Route 93 flow past in a sandy blur. Her husband frowned, shook his head, and turned on the radio. Static rose and fell in waves, crashing against a DJ talking about upcoming events somewhere else in civilization, and a moment later Hank Williams began to sing “Weary Blues From Waitin’.”
Now we’re talkin’, her daddy said. He loved Hank Williams.
She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, remembering the way her daddy used to sing this song to himself whenever it played on the radio. She could almost see him sitting on the edge of the bed, humming the tune while pulling on his black dress shoes.
Karen followed that memory down into the darkness of her mind as the hum of the engine lulled her to sleep—
“What the hell?”
Karen shot forward and cried out when the seatbelt dug into her shoulder. The world swam for a moment as an ache worked its way down to the base of her neck, and when she opened her eyes she saw they had come to a full stop in the middle of the highway.
Martin gripped the steering wheel. Karen followed his gaze through the windshield.
A white, rust-spotted pickup truck sat on its side between the highway and hillside. A carpet of shattered glass spread out from the wreckage, and a woman lay a few feet away in the middle of the road with her back to them. A few strands of her dirty blonde hair fluttered in a low breeze.
“Oh, Jesus.” Martin shifted the SUV into park and was about to climb out of the car, but Karen put her hand on his knee and shook her head. “I have to, Karen. She’s hurt.”
And then he was out the door, jogging across the gap toward the woman in the road. Karen watched her husband, trying to swallow the uncomfortable lump slowly rising in her throat.
Somethin’ ain’t right, honey. A pickup doesn’t just fall onto its side. You need two to tango. Where’s the other car?
She leaned forward and looked at the road. No skid marks or other tire tracks. All the shards of glass were off to the side, sprinkled along the edge of the truck. There were no pools of gas or oil, and although the thought made her stomach twist into itself, there wasn’t any blood, either.
Karen’s shaking fingers found the latch and opened the door. She stepped out into the dry Arizona heat and struggled to find her voice. Don’t go there, she wanted to cry out. Get away from her, Martin. But her words failed her, and Karen stood frozen to the highway as shapes emerged from behind the overturned truck.
Martin knelt beside the woman with his fingers on her neck. He looked back when Karen closed the SUV door.
“She’s alive,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Grab my cell and call 911.”
Martin was still watching her, his face a mixture of grim determination and puzzlement, wondering why his wife wasn’t doing as he’d asked. He was so perplexed by Karen’s immobility he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.
He didn’t notice the young woman with the dirty blonde hair roll onto her back. He didn’t see her toothless smile and her gums riddled with blackened, bloody holes; he didn’t see the rusty blade in her hand.
“Thy will be done,” the woman said, jamming the knife through the center of Martin’s loafer.
In her mind, Karen made a mad dash across the road toward her husband, sprinting as fast as her heels would carry her. She tore the blade from her husband’s foot and slashed the blonde bitch across her face, spreading that toothless grin even wider by a few bloody inches. She saw herself turn to the figures advancing toward them from beyond the pickup truck; she saw herself fending them off with the blade, protecting the man she loved, the man who had nurtured her through the aftermath of her accident. She wouldn’t let them hurt him anymore than they had, and oh, they would pay dearly for doing so.
Except that wasn’t right.
Confused, Karen blinked and found she was back inside herself, snapped out of her trance and into a reality punctuated by the agonized shrieks of her wounded husband and the gleeful laughter of a crazy woman lying in the road.
Five masked men in dusty black robes emerged from behind the pickup truck and approached the pair on the highway. One man broke away from the group and turned toward her, crossing the distance with quick, able steps. His mask was blood red and depicted a pained expression, with one side of its cheek drawn downward in agony. Jagged cutouts framed two crazed eyes that glimmered in the late afternoon sun—and they were boring a hole right through her.
The other men fell upon Martin while the blonde crowing bitch climbed to her feet. She danced around them, singing in her cackling manner, “Thy will be done! Thy will be done! The time is at hand! Thy will be done, oh Lord!”
Ugly Little Things Page 14