Desiderium – Monsters, the First Ch 6

My #WedPeeks post for this week is chapter six of my new novella, scheduled for release this coming October. Desiderium is a dark fantasy/horror and is for mature readers.

*Warning: There is violence, sex, and a lot of profanity in these pages.

 

~ SIX ~

Hunted

God is punishing me. I’m certain of it.

I’ve never been to church a day in my life, and a year ago I would have told you that he doesn’t even know who I am because he’s never heard my voice. But I’m wrong. He knows me, he sees me. And he’s punishing me.

Something changed that night in the alley, though I don’t know why or what could have changed it. It’s like that ledge was something holy, and by coming on it I somehow defiled it, bringing a curse down upon myself. Despite the sneaking out, things had been going perfectly, but now they’re fucked. Since that night, since that instant, things have gone to shit and I can’t explain why.

My dreams have changed again. They changed from the wonderful passion play that Sophie and I both enjoyed into something dark and dirty. The fucked-up evil shit came back. They still begin the same, but the ending has started to vary, and they’re becoming increasingly dark and disturbing. Worse still, Sophie knows. The wonderful interlude of enjoying each other without question is definitely over.

At first the contents of the dreams just morphed into a bizarre kaleidoscope of images. Naked flesh, but twisted and distorted, swollen and misshapen—something out of a Dali painting. And the sounds changed from the heavy breathing of two people making love to the desperate panting of the hunted. The gasping became terror filled; passion of an entirely different sort. And then came the screaming. Jesus Christ, I have never heard sounds like that. The truly terrifying point was when I discovered it was me, the unholy sounds ripping from my throat, Sophie shaking me and yelling my name, trying to wake me.

But that isn’t where it stopped. They kept changing, the images, the sounds, and soon the shifting shapes became my brother entwined with someone who was most definitely not his wife Kate. It was disturbing enough to be dreaming about my dead brother fucking some strange woman, but the screams of pain became Blake’s, and the woman changed, too. Her mouth distorted into an enormous, flat O shape with row after row of teeth encircling a mouth that took up almost all of her face. Only her eyes remained, and the mouth attached itself to Blake’s abdomen. It reminded me of a picture of a Lamprey Eel mouth I had once seen in biology class in high school. That’s when the screams began anew.

Her fingers grew into claws that dug and ripped into Blake’s flesh and her skin turned a flat, scaly gray as her breasts grew into sharp horns that curved out from her chest. Her eyes took on a narrow, slitted reptilian shape and glowed a sickly green color like diseased bioluminescent algae floating on a black ocean. The creature ripped at Blake’s body with its claws, breaking open his flesh, but no blood came out—only dark, rusty dust. And Blake, screaming. He sounded inhuman, a sound I have never heard before. I once heard two cats fucking out in the field behind the house when we were camping out as kids, and the sound had lifted every hair on my body. I always thought that had to be the creepiest noise ever, but not any longer. This was worse. Far worse.

When I’m awake, I hear sounds. I hear voices whispering my name, and phantom touches brushing across my shoulders, pressing on my chest, grasping my balls.

I swear it’s real.

I am haunted.

And tonight. Christ. My hands are shaking with the retelling. And goddamn it, but I can’t keep from crying. I am a coward—it’s hard for me to say, but actions speak louder than words, and the shaking and tears betray me.

In tonight’s dream, Blake started screaming my name. Screaming for me to help him while his body was ripped apart and sucked dry by a tooth-lined maw attached to that vaguely womanish body. He screamed my name until his voice was choked off, and then there was only silence.

When I woke up from the dream tonight I lurched into the bathroom and vomited. It had felt so real, it had sounded so real. What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I finally losing my mind after these years of grief? Is that thing in the dream the thing that got my brother? Is it seeking me now? Is this the darkness I have been seeking? Is this what I have to battle and destroy? Ice fills my stomach whenever I think about it. How do you kill something like that?

It’s been two weeks since I came on that ledge, and since then the dreams have been increasing in frequency and violence. Am I being punished for my animalistic hunger and indecent behavior from the last few months? For spewing my seed in dark alleys and hanging out at dingy clubs acting as if I’m searching for my brother’s murderer, but really chasing something else, even if I don’t know what that might be? Months have gone by with nothing, and yet I go to the same places, talk to the same people, spend more time away from Sophie and away from my job. What am I playing at? Maybe I am just a sick perv, using Blake’s death as an excuse to indulge my sick fantasies.

I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I do know I can’t return to my bed and to Sophie right now. Not after that. I slip on my clothes and head out the door and into the dimly lit streets of the city. Sophie will kill me if she finds out I left again. She’s been getting increasingly agitated by my frequent late-night vanishing acts, and she’s less and less reticent about showing it. She hasn’t openly confronted me about it yet, but I see the challenge in her eyes when I look at her now. And the fear. I know she and Kate have talked about it, and I’ve stumbled in on one or both of them red-faced and blotchy, with dark rings beneath their eyes from tear-washed mascara. It’s only a matter of time before the challenge becomes open and verbal. I don’t know what I’ll do when that comes. I won’t stop my search…or whatever this journey is. As much as it scares me, at least I’m on the offensive and taking action. And if I’m completely honest, this thing scares the shit out of me, but I also have a perverse fascination with it. I want to see this thing. I need to know.

I know that Sophie and Kate both look at my behavior and see my brother. It isn’t like that. I wish I could reassure them and make them see that this is different. I am not my brother. He was a victim, I am a predator. I am going to kill the shadow, not succumb to it like Blake did.

At least I think I am. What’s so different between what I’m doing now and what he did just prior to his death? I don’t know what he was up to during those weeks and months before he died, but we all know that he slipped out night after night to wander the city streets. We even had him followed sometimes. He never stopped to chat up a whore or solicit drugs. He wandered, but not aimlessly. He wandered with great focus and intent. And he wandered until he vanished. And he vanished every night. No one could find him after he had slipped away like that. He was simply there one moment, and then gone the next. It baffled the hell out of the investigators we hired, and he slipped the watchful eyes of more than one of them and in more than one place.

God damn it, Blake, why didn’t you talk to me? Is this what it was like for you? Haunted by some phantasm, driven almost mad with desire and the frantic need for satisfaction? Am I following in your footsteps? Or is it different somehow for me, as I feel it is? Maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

I never vanish. I simply walk. I come home in the mornings, after the sun has risen above the horizon and bathed the darkness of my dreams and fears with the shining light of day. I’m not a religious man, but if I were I would believe in the power of sunlight. The stories of vamps and demons burning up in the light of the sun must be true. I know it burns up my demons. In the daylight I can forget about unnaturally beautiful women who turn into monsters and take the lives of people I love. I can breathe freely and feel like I’m not one of the hunted.

But what if I’m imagining it all? Is it all in my head? Or am I really following in my brother’s ill-fated footsteps?

 

 

Join the blog hop! Every Wednesday share a piece of your fantasy writing, whether a bit of flash, a short or an excerpt! Sign up below, see the details here.