The muscles on her back were now exposed to the open air. Her flawless skin had split along her spine and divided, peeling away to hang in two great flaps over the sides of her body. Sinews glistened in the weak light, contracting like a stack of crimson snakes. Agbal kept watch on them as he edged around the side of the room, reluctant to look at her face till he was standing in front of it.
When he did, he found there wasn’t much left to see. The right side of her skull had crumpled into itself. Her right eyeball was swollen, pupil dilated, and appeared ready to pop from the socket. Her left eye was intact, but glared at him between tendrils of flesh that sprouted from her cheek and curled upward, like black flowers searching for the sun. Her jaw looked distended, having stretched to accommodate her growing teeth. The bottom set had shot up like reeds, spearing through her cheeks and the roof of her mouth, rendering her mute. Blood trickled from the wounds, pattering upon the mess on the floor—bloody clumps of hair and most of her scalp.
Agbal tried to speak, but the breath shot out of him in one high-pitched gasp. Fighting for composure, he swallowed and tried again.
“I’m… sorry this happened to you.”
By the look in her eye, she hardly appeared comforted.
“They tricked both of us. It shouldn’t be like this, but when an untrained mind is exposed, fear and panic have their way. You can’t be afraid, because then…”
Something bubbled and burst on her arm, spraying blood and pus across the bricks.
Agbal sighed. “…this.” He crouched down to snatch up the ashtray from the floor beneath her head. It was brimming with ash and blood. He walked over to a corner of the cellar hidden by grey tarpaulin and ducked beneath it.
“You’re going to die, Sherda,” he said, when she couldn’t see him. “The Munzur will tear at you till there’s nothing left. I can’t halt it. I can’t reverse it.”
The girl twitched. Another piece of her splashed on the floor.
Agbal emerged once more, still clutching the ashtray—now clean—in one hand, and a half-dozen grey-green buds in the other. He squeezed his fist and crushed them. They crumbled like ash, but in the debris he spied the seeds, gleaming with the promise of strange magick. He strained them with his fingers and dropped them into the ashtray, layering dry grass on top for kindling.
Crouching back down in front of her, he stared pleadingly into her one good eye. “Sherda, there’s no hope of going back. But I can offer you… something else.”
There was a sound of skin tearing under her breasts. In the shadows beneath her belly, something dropped, wet and heavy.
“You don’t have much time left. So tell me. If it were possible, would you live again?”
She shuddered, snorting blood from ragged nostrils. It sprayed across Agbal’s face, but he didn’t care. He kept watch on her deformed head as she raised it slowly up and down, conjuring all her strength to nod yes.
He sighed. “I was afraid of that.” Agbal placed the ashtray under her head and struck a match. Touching its flame to the kindling—and the dozen seeds nestled beneath—he returned his gaze to the girl’s bloodshot eye. “You’re not going to like what comes next.”
“There’s a drug. But instead of altering your mind, it alters your body.” This was what Pox had told the girl. He could remember the words, but he couldn’t remember her name. He didn’t know why this bothered him, but it did. “Problem is, the only guy with access is this head-case who made up a whole crazy religion about it. So if you want the drug, there’s some weird shit you’ve got to do and say to make him think you’re as fucked in the head as he is.”
“Cathedral”, at one time in decades past, had been exactly what its name suggested. But over the years the congregation thinned and the building crumbled, till finally it was gifted to the whims of private enterprise. Now it was a nightclub where pale, odd creatures in black leather and lace could cavort to industrial rock in hazy Gothic opulence.
Pox’s home was a silver caravan connected to a spiral staircase fifty feet above the dance floor. Tricks of its design—half-hidden supporting columns and cables—made it appear at a glance to be hovering in mid-air, close to the cathedral roof, floating on a cloud of dry ice.
It was a sanctuary to retreat to, a relatively quiet space even in the midst of one of Degredatia’s excruciating DJ sets. It was a place of comfort where he could sit, drink and think, while one random clubgoer applied fresh ink to the tattoos on his chest and another sucked at his forked penis. Unsheathed from his robes, his genitalia resembled a two-headed albino snake—an entirely unintended consequence of his own spell under the Munzur’s influence. It amused him to think how even a mind as well-trained as his could still be outdone by those mischievous seeds.
Sherda, as Pox and Degredatia had explained to Agbal, was nobody. She was nothing worth exerting any thought over. That he should have forgotten her real name was of no consequence. He could barely recall his own. Truly, his life—and his sister’s—had only begun when a tattered stranger had shown up at their door carrying nothing but a plant in a polythene bag.
At any other door he’d surely have been turned away, but he’d chosen theirs. He’d spent the preceding months stalking the vaults and basement bars of their city, searching its neon-bathed enclaves for someone willing to believe the story he had to tell. Amongst all the pierced and painted citizens of the night, the implanted and modified, he’d spotted Pox and his sister and recognized within them the desperate longing to become something more than human.
“Half the world feels that way,” Degredatia had said, on hearing him describe it so. “Why come to us?”
“Simple,” he’d replied, clutching the plant to his chest. “The Goddess told me to.”
Against better judgement they had listened attentively to his tales of the far-flung land and obscure culture from which he had fled—and the prize he had smuggled out with him. Too intrigued to dismiss his outlandish claims, they had given him a place to stay and submitted to his tutelage.
“I can teach you how to use it,” he’d said. “You can become angels.”
And so they had, uniting with the seed, letting it lead them on a journey that twisted their bodies beyond the limits of earthly science. They had been overwhelmed by the results and quickly their minds had turned to profit.
Agbal had seemed disappointed by their attitude. He hadn’t expected the “chosen disciples of the Goddess” to be so capitalistic. But trusting in Her judgement, he agreed to help them.
The potential was obvious. Want bigger tits but scared to go under the knife? Come to Pox and Degredatia. Want to be taller? Thinner? Better looking? All cosmetic enhancements handled at a fraction of the retail price!
Agbal had assured them it didn’t work that way. There was nothing cosmetic about the Munzur. It engaged with the user on an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual level. The ritual worked wonders on flesh, but it didn’t always do what it was told. Pox proved this for himself on his third and final trip.
Still, there was money to be made, especially within their community. It thrived with men and women who had paid surgeons thousands to contort their flesh, sculpt their muscles, break and reset bones, all in the hope of outwardly displaying their internal otherness to an uncaring world.
Soon the siblings gathered a flock of admirers, strangely receptive to their unique brand of repulsive glamour. And from such small beginnings they had, over the subsequent weeks, months, and years, built an empire.
“More teeth,” Pox told the girl at his crotch, the first words he’d spoken to her since their introduction. She obliged, grinding her incisors along the thick skin of his shaft, paying no attention to the thin trails of blood streaming down his belly, caused by the electric needle of her companion.
Pox liked his tattoos to be retouched frequently—daily if possible. He didn’t want to let them heal. Better that they bled, always. The girl at his side was no artist, but was no more squeamish at the sight of blood than h
er friend. That had to count for something.
Both girls were white with dyed fluorescent hair and the contents of half a make-up counter smeared across their faces, but in many ways they weren’t unlike Sherda. Just as cloying, just as eager to please and dazzled by his monstrosity. Like her, they hoped to taste the Munzur. They longed to become something more. Like Sherda, they couldn’t afford the asking price. But unlike her, they were willing to trade in favors.
In this regard at least, Pox thought, they were smarter than she had been.
A child’s plastic sippy cup was in his hand, half-filled with ice and vodka. Attempting to drink from anything else usually led to spillages. Raising it to his over-wide mouth he realized that as with Sherda, he couldn’t remember these girls’ names either.
A pounding fist on the caravan wall spoiled the moment. The girl with the tattoo gun sat up and turned it off. The other withdrew her lips from around Pox’s cock and gazed up at him with blank eyes.
“Answer it,” he told the first. When she stood, he passed the sippy cup to the girl on her knees. “Here. Best keep in practice,” he told her, adjusting his robes to conceal his genitals.
Sound flooded the room as the door swung open—the cacophony of the crowd coupled with the screech and shriek of Degredatia’s latest mix. Agbal stood in the doorway, backlit by strobe lights and lasers.
For all the unpleasantness of their earlier meeting, Pox was pleased to see him, immediately waving him in and the girls out. As she made her way past him, the second girl handed the sippy cup to Agbal, then slammed the door behind her.
The caravan wasn’t entirely sound-proofed, but it was at least possible to converse at a civilized volume. “Come to make amends?” Pox said.
“That’s right.”
“Good sense not to hold a grudge.”
Agbal put a hand in his pocket. “What happened to Sherda was my fault. I shirked my responsibilities to the Goddess and that got her killed.” He produced his phone and held it out. “You asked for a picture.”
Pox immediately leaned forward and stretched out his arm. “Give us a look then.”
Agbal handed the phone over and turned away. Pox ignored the apparent show of disgust and put the screen up to his bulging eyes. What it showed him was a grey husk. Sherda’s body appeared desiccated, frozen in the midst of a back-breaking lurch, as though she had been instantly fossilized at the height of her agony. From the angle at which the photo had been taken it was possible to make out the second mouth that had opened in the centre of her head, its black throat promising smooth passage to the very core of her being. To Pox, it looked like she had died while regurgitating her soul. “I didn’t know the seeds could do that to a person,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his awe.
Agbal said nothing.
If Pox could have blinked the vision away he would. Instead, he wiped the sleeve of his robes across his glass-covered eyes and held out the phone, swapping it for his sippy cup. “You disposed of the remains?”
“Not my first time.” Agbal’s hip-flask was in his hand, the top unscrewed.
“I didn’t think so. You’re not angry, are you?”
Agbal shook his head. “I lost my way, but I feel I’ve found it again.”
Pox’s hideous smile widened just a fraction. “Hey, it’s like you always say. The Goddess picked us for a reason, right?” He raised his cup in toast.
Agbal tapped his flask against the rim and raised it to his lips. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
Pox threw his head back and drank. The vodka was halfway down his gullet when it revolted—an explosion of icicles in his throat. He choked, froth spraying from his lips, and jerked forward on the couch, sputtering, straining to make words through the pain. He popped the lid and found the liquid brimming with something oily and red. “What did you put in here?”
Agbal’s flask was still at his mouth, but his lips hadn’t touched it. Now he tipped it upside down, emptying its bloody contents onto the floor. The dark red puddle quivered, then spread liquid tentacles toward Pox, who retched, hands clawing at his throat.
“The Munzur can do more than you realize,” Agbal told him, as the blood trickled up his legs, dividing and subdividing into needle-thin rivulets. “A single seed misused wreaks bloody havoc and certain death.” The slivers of blood climbed Pox’s thighs and crossed his belly to reach and mingle with the trails from his tattoos. “But an overdose? That’s a different matter entirely.”
Pox screamed as Sherda’s blood invaded the open wounds on his chest. He felt it twisting in his veins, poisoning his flesh. He leaped from the couch and staggered toward the door.
The crowd roared when he appeared on the platform outside the caravan, but he barely heard it through the blood in his ears. He felt a lump in his throat, something churning with the mad panic of a suffocating eel. Gripping the hand rail, every muscle straining, he pitched his head forward and tried to puke it out.
The thing that forced its way up wasn’t vomit. It brought half his esophagus with it as it emerged—a slimy red rope of skinless flesh and sinew, snapping his jaw loose from his skull. He saw it pour from his lips, scattering teeth, yet it did not drop. It hung from his mouth, something anchoring it deep within his stomach, then bent in half, the cluster of knitted red fibers at its end curving back towards his face. He recognized their shape in the instant before they speared his eyes.
They were fingers.
Degradatia, concentrating on her music, was late to the party. Sounds of confusion and concern from the crowd had erupted into screams before she glanced up from her position in the DJ booth and saw her brother—or what remained of him—hanging from the platform high above the dance floor.
Spotlights found the thing that had a hold of him—the thing that appeared to be hatching from him, tearing its way through his head, neck and chest like a blood-smeared baby lizard bursting from its egg. Flesh, bone, and red glass showered the revellers below, each violent movement revealing a little more of the red, writhing thing within.
It had too many arms. Too many claws. Its head was a complicated cage of intersecting bone and sinew topped by a cluster of thin horns, snaking their way around each other to form an elaborate crown. With a tug, it tore itself free of Pox’s mutilated body, let it tip over the rail and drop.
Degradatia screamed to see her brother fall, sending jets of air into every bellow in her body, the sacks bursting from her skin like a thousand blood-filled blisters.
She kept screaming as the creature he’d birthed reared up, crossed its myriad spiked limbs over its torso and spread its wings. They were ragged and pock-marked, like sheets of scarlet leather that had been savaged with a rake, but they worked well enough. The crowd scattered as the beast launched into the air and swept down toward the stage. Degradatia dove beneath the DJ booth, but it offered no protection. Her brother’s killer ploughed straight through it, then through her—bone and armored muscle smashing wood and plastic, skin and organs to shreds. It swung back through the crimson cloud of debris, snatched what was left of Degredatia up in its talons and cast her broken body out into the flock. Torn fragments pattered the room like bloody hailstones.
No music now. The hiss of stereo feedback and whimpers of the crowd played background to the whipping sound of wings as it rose higher, up to the roof of Pox’s caravan.
Agbal had retreated only a few steps down the stairs. There had been no time to go farther. The siblings’ destruction had taken only seconds. And it had been beautiful.
The newborn’s body was coated in blood. It streamed from the ends of its riveted limbs and painted elaborate patterns in the grooves of its chest. Digging is talons into the caravan’s roof, it raised itself up to its full height, threw its head back and unleashed a howl of tormented ecstasy.
No man or animal alive could match it.
In the gore-spattered hall below, the flock ceased their whimpering. Still clinging to each other, too much in shock to run for the exits, they
lifted their heads to regard the shrieking miracle high above. Like Agbal, they beheld Her magnificence. They beheld Her glory.
Humbled by the sight, Agbal dropped to his knees. A moment later, the crowd followed.
John McNee is a writer of strange and disturbing horror stories, published in a variety of strange and disturbing anthologies. His debut novel, Prince of Nightmares, was published in 2016 by Blood Bound Books. He is also the creator of the diseased sludge-city Grudgehaven, and author of two books detailing the adventures of its freakish inhabitants: Grudge Punk and Petroleum Precinct.
He lives in Scotland and is gainfully employed as editor of a trade magazine, writing mostly about the horrors of tea and biscuits. He can be easily reached via Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter @THEJohnMcNee.
THE BITCH by Kristopher Triana
KRISTOPHER TRIANA
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
—Psalms 46:10
He came in closer to her lips as he fiddled with his belt buckle.
Already she could smell the accumulation of his days without bathing. The front of his jeans were stained with food specks and old cigar ash, the material tightening as he lifted his semi-hard cock out of them. As he shook it out, a waft of groin-musk entered her nostrils and she felt her balance slipping even in the confines of the chair. Before her now—right in her face—was his beige cock, slung out like a raw sausage. It wasn’t very long, but thicker than any other that had ever been inside of her mouth or body. She watched as a single vein twitched beneath the brown rim of his circumcision scar. Beyond it was a black bush that glistened with sweat.
“Now remember our deal,” he said. “You be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you. Do this and you won’t have to worry about the cops.”
Emma tried to nod in agreement but a dizzying nausea had made it hard to do so. The warped head of his dick came closer and she felt his fingers sluice through her hair and bind a fistful of it up into a ball. When the tip of his cock grazed her shuddering lips, she hesitated slightly and turned her head, only to feel the ball of her hair tighten as he pushed her back into place. Already she could see that he was growing harder, excited by this sadism. He pushed his manhood toward her and it touched her mouth, bumping slightly on her teeth as she closed her eyes.
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