“Ghosts!” Jove growled. Souls of the departed. Why couldn’t he devour them like he had before?
Something inside him had changed; no, not just inside him, but in the entire world. At the height of his power everything felt loose, pliable, unstable. Now everything felt solid again, everything but him. His essence quivered and threatened to fly apart, but Jove held on, keeping it together by sheer force of will.
The Hunger twisted inside him, its demand for food growing louder and more desperate. Jove staggered forward, but the women didn’t move, and there were so many that Jove couldn’t push through them. When he tried, he was rebuffed by a flash of searing light.
“Get out of my way!” he screamed.
The women didn’t say anything to him, they just continued to stare. A chill washed over Jove–not the cold hunger churning the emptiness at his core, but actual fear. He recognized these faces, for he never forgot a face.
These women were his dolls. His broken dolls.
There were dozens of them; all young, a few even small girls, all accusing him with unblinking glares. As one they stepped forward, closing in a circle about him. Jove tried again to push through them, but this time the dolls in his path reached out and shoved him back. Though spirits, to Jove they were as solid as any wall.
“Let me through!” he snarled.
Not one of the dolls replied.
Despite his broken leg, Jove charged with the intent to break out of their circle, but he was shoved back a second time so hard that he crashed to the ground.
Jove examined an arm. His skin was starting to shrivel and slough off as clumps of hair littered the ground around him. He needed food, or the Hunger would devour him! Another ghost appeared, a girl scarcely into the first years of womanhood. She stared down at Jove and he knew her face. He’d never forgotten that face. It’d haunted his nightmares for years.
It belonged to Jove’s very first victim.
As he stared into her blue eyes, the name he’d so long forgotten snapped back from the depths of his memory. “Elaynia!”
She had been his neighbor and childhood friend. But as Jove had started coming into manhood, and Elaynia flowered into a woman, she’d become the focus of his lusts and often the object of his violent fantasies.
Using his best trouper’s skills, Jove had wooed the young woman with promises of future marriage, and they started to steal away to secret places so Jove could indulge his adolescent urges. Then one day, while they were cavorting in the woods, Jove lost control. She’d begged him to stop, but the thrill of squeezing the life from her while his passions escalated was intoxicating, and when it was over, poor Elaynia was dead.
Guilt crashed down on Jove like a physical thing. He’d panicked and disposed of her body with his tinder box. He’d so thoroughly immolated the girl that no one ever found even her ashes. Agonizing guilt gnawed at Jove for weeks, and he found relief would only come by repeating his dark deed with other victims. In time, he’d been able to bury much of the memory of killing his childhood friend, even achieving a voluntary amnesia of sorts, but Jove had never been able to forget the pleading in Elaynia’s eyes as he throttled the life from her.
That look stung him even to this day, and he’d all but succeeded in forgetting the girl, to the point that a nameless face was his only recollection. But now Jove remembered, and the pain of his guilt rivaled the internal scouring of the Hunger.
The girl slowly raised an arm and pointed at Jove.
“I’m sorry, Elaynia!” he shrieked. “I didn’t mean for it to go so far!”
All the broken dolls took another unified step toward him, closing the circle so tight that Jove could barely move. He cowered beneath their glares, mind afire with perfect recollection of all the pain he’d caused them. And there was more. Somehow they wordlessly transmitted to Jove a sense of what it had been like to suffer his tortures and die at his hands. This was compounded by the vicarious grief of their loved ones, the panic and the pain of searching parents, the anger of brothers, husbands, and the loneliness of children left behind.
Jove howled.
The deluge of memory and projected suffering overwhelmed him and he collapsed on his face. He whimpered as the Hunger turned on him. If he could not feed it, then it was going to feed on him.
A protracted, echoing scream tore from Jove’s lips as his skin shrunk around his bones, and his eyes shriveled in their sockets. His body finally crumbled to ash and bone, but Jove’s terror didn’t end with death. Although the world around him was solid and stable once more, Jove’s soul felt loose and vulnerable.
His broken dolls swarmed him and tore at the very fibers of his being. Piece by piece, Jove’s soul was torn apart by the women whose lives he’d snuffed out. The world around him started to blur, and the last thing he saw was Elaynia’s face. Then darkness swallowed Jove and obliterated his soul.
Jason King is a veteran of both Canadian-American wars, a cosmonaut by proxy, and has managed to achieve immortality…until he dies.
Born in Salt Lake City Utah, Jason grew up on a steady diet of anime, science fiction, Dungeons and Dragons, JRPG's, and chocolate cake donuts, which makes it all the more miraculous that he managed to marry a beautiful (and despite what his friends and family believe) very real girl. He is the proud father of four brilliant and wonderful children, and the hostage of two cats, a dog, four parakeets, two rabbits, and is haunted by the spirit of a Navajo shaman.
Jason is the CEO of Immortal Works press, and the author of the Valcoria series, and Thomas Destiny. He is also a grateful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a proud "anonymous" member of the Space Balrogs comedy troupe.
For more about Jason’s novels and short stories, please visit his website: www.authorjasonking.com.
Jason also blogs about his faith at https://authorjasonking.blogspot.com/.
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