Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell

by Nathan Ballingrud

Will felt the presence of it before he could see it. He felt an answer to the long ache. He leaned over Eric’s shuddering body, brought his face close. He opened his mouth over the wound, touched his lips to its ragged edges. Fix me, he thought. Please. Make me whole. He closed his eyes, felt the billowing heat of it. Something moved against his tongue and he sobbed with a terrified gratitude as it probed the roof of his mouth, his teeth, and his cheeks. Filling his mouth. He opened wider and gulped it all in, blood leaking from the seal of his lips. Eric began to shriek, repeatedly and in escalating volume, and a host of startled cockroaches scrambled from their lairs, climbing up the walls and rising into the air with their dark, humming wings, a swarm of Christ-bound spirits.