Bodies Are Disgusting (17 page)

It comes to you then: you won't find a
representation of him here, not really. This place is too damaged
and he has fled. The true scope of work nearly staggers you. If
there is any hope to be had of bringing Simon back to himself, you
have to fix this... somehow.

You start simply at first. You pick up
scattered books, run your fingers over them, relish in the essence
of your friend they carry. His soul is laid bare to you as you
rearrange these pieces, and the more of them you touch, the more
you feel like you truly
know
him. You revisit items you'd
shelved, caressing the spines like you would a beloved pet. The
damaged ones leave you feeling empty and rotten and you seize upon
that. Through your will, you scoop out the festering feelings and
fill the voids with better things, bits of yourself, bits of your
friendship with Simon.

Slowly, painstakingly, you impose order into
the chaos. Tomes are reshelved, debris swept away. The ink-blood
smears your arms up to the elbows, but it's stopped flowing. You
see flickers of light out of the corner of your eye, the far-off
lamps turning themselves on in the more remote corners of Simon's
library. Cobwebs disappear, singed volumes look less forlorn. It's
still obvious that there's been a cataclysm of some sort in this
library's past, but now it looks like a distant thing.

Except for the desk. It still dominates the
center of the place, twisted and charred and crusted with inky
ichor. There's no avoiding it, you
have
to set it right if
you want Simon to be well again. There isn't any true need for
breathing here, but it's so deeply ingrained into you to take a
deep breath before steeling yourself that you mime it just the
same. You grab the desk with both hands, curling your fingers under
what remains of the desktop and bracing your feet to heft it
upright again.

* * *

It's one in the morning and you
are not yourself.

You're a bit drunk, if the warmth
in your face and the slight wobble to the ground is any indication,
and you're fumbling a little with your key. For some reason (you
aren't quite convinced that it's the alcohol), it just refuses to
slide into the deadbolt on the front door. From behind, you hear an
inpatient snort before another hand steadied yours and slides the
key home. Your face flushes further, and it isn't the
booze.

The door swings wide and you
stumble in. your house is dim (the kitchen light's on), and your
roommate is nowhere to be seen. It's just you, your drunkenness,
and the man who keeps a steadying grip on your hips.

It's stupid and you feel like you're
fourteen years old again, but you can't help sniggering a little at
the prospect that you might actually get laid tonight. You can feel
the dopey grin on your face as you turn to meet Luke's eyes (there
is a strange disconnect because you feel the visceral reaction of
your heart fluttering, but you are distantly aware of your entire
being recoiling at the sight of him). His expression is a queer mix
of fondness, desire, and abject frustration, all together with
something you can't quite name
(
it's
possessiveness, the sort one feels toward a prized sports car or a
race horse, how can Simon not see it
)
.
Your stomach feels full of excited little moths.

Luke
(
Lucien
)
slides his
fingers underneath your shirt. "I want you, Simon." They leave
trails of fire and lust on your skin.

You swallow twice and the keys
slip through your grasp in a clatter before you can manage to get
out a weak sort of "Oh–okay."

He guides you to the couch, pushes
you firmly into its cushions, starts working open the buttons on
your horrifically plaid shirt. Your head lolls back and your hands
rise to try to work at the buckle of his belt but Luke bats your
hands away. It's all right. You're too drunk to have the
coordination for operating such a complicated garment. Best to just
lay back and enjoy it.

Luke slides your shirt over your
shoulders and viciously finishes the job of untucking your
undershirt that you'd begun earlier while dancing in the bar. He
licks at your abdomen, fingers moving to unbutton your skinny
jeans. You're not hard yet, too drunk for a full-on erection, but
your dick's definitely paying attention to Luke's every move. One
of your hands drifts to his hair and stays there as you pet the
part of it that's freshly buzzed.

Your gaze locks on him through
your eyelashes (you're not sleepy, you're really not, but the booze
is making it hard to keep your eyes open), and you can't help but
shiver as your eyes meet. Luke's gaze is downright predatory and
you're willing to bet that he's going to be an animal when you get
him in the sack (metaphorically speaking because, whoa, you are not
sober enough to operate stairs right now in addition to belt
buckles and buttons).

Without breaking eye contact, he
unzips your jeans and pushes them down your legs. His nails dig
into your skin, not enough to hurt but enough to let you know that
they're present and accounted for. It's enough to fully get your
dick in the game, at least, but now your jockeys are a little too
uncomfortable. He must be psychic, though, because he hooks his
fingers in the waistband of your shorts and pulls them down, too.
Still not breaking eye contact, his lips find the base of it and
his tongue traces up your frenum in too-hot slow motion.

"Ah, fuck!"

Luke smirks. "Yeah, that's the
plan." He pulls himself up your body and nips at your
earlobe.

When he pulls away, you catch a
glint of something out of the corner of your eye. His eyes seem
frosted over, like a cataract sufferer's where once they had been
an inviting hazel. His skin has taken on a sallow sheen. "You
okay?" you slur.

His lips press into a hard line
before pulling back into a grim rictus of a smile. "I want you," he
states. He has more teeth than he should. More teeth than you can
count. His face seems to split open like a rotten fruit, flesh
flaking. Your blood runs cold and you try to scramble up the back
of the couch to get away.

At the edges of your vision, you
think you can see the rustling of restless wings in the shadows.
Luke's face presses toward you and it's less like he leaned over
and more like everything around you grew so warped and distorted
that it was only natural that his visage should be next to yours.
Your back scrapes against the wallpaper. You're out of places to
go. His hands, clawlike now and pale like bones, slam into the wall
to either side of you.

"Join me," Luke says. His voice
nearly drips with desire. Under other circumstances, you would find
it sexy. Now, it makes your skin feel oily and soiled.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
To your credit, your voice is steady.

The monstrous thing that was once Luke
snarls.
Join with me!
The words reverberate through you such
that you hear them with your bones. Join with me now! One of its
claws pushes against your chest, the talons digging into the tender
flesh of your sides while the other slides down your hip. The
looming, toothy face nuzzles against your neck.
I will give you
everything. Do not fight me.

You feel something slimy slide
down your collarbone, and that is all you can stand. Your hands fly
to the monster's face, your fingernails scrabble against its eye
sockets. With it pressing you against the wall, your feet are free
to kick at where you vaguely recall Luke's solar plexus being. Its
skin, if you can call it such, is clammy under your fingers, and
you nearly gag when your fingers find something that's warm and
gooey.

The monster cackles. It runs along
every nerve, an electric spark that has nothing to do with
sensuality; instead, it's like being tased. The flapping of wings
is an audible thing now. The shadows writhe with winged things you
can't quite make out. "Get the fuck away from me!"

The slimy thing, you realize, is
the monster's tongue. It wraps around your neck, even as you crook
your fingers in its eye sockets and scoop out the viscous goop
you've made of its eyeballs. One of the claws at your hip slips
around to trace patterns of simmering pain in the skin at the small
of your back. The monster's tongue unwinds from around your throat
and makes its way over your jaw to swipe across your
lips.

The thing's face is almost
completely devoid of skin, all of it having dropped off onto the
floor and couch before you. Now it's simply bone and teeth as long
as your fingers set into something that almost looks like a beak.
The tongue lolls out from its gaping open maw, grinning like a
plague-ridden carrion bird. It rubs its beak against your cheek,
letting the tips of its fangs scrape the topmost layers of your
skin away. Its eye sockets are so huge now that you could
practically cram your fists into them, but nothing you do even
fazes it.

Its tongue finds its way across your lips
again, slower this time, leaving a trail of ooze over them that
would make you want to vomit if you weren't trying your very
hardest to make sure it couldn't get past them. The palm of the
"hand" holding you against the wall scoots down your chest until
the heel of the "palm" (if such words can really be ascribed to the
creature's appendages) rests against your mons.
Oh, dear Simon,
does this form not please you? It pleases me.

You can't respond. All you can do is shove
your hands more forcefully into where you think its eyes ought to
be and hope that you finally hit something that will make it shy
away in pain. Its palm scoots lower until it cups your flaccid
cock. The surface of it is chilly, just this side of freezing.
Join with me, Simon. I will show you such pleasures that you cannot
even begin to comprehend with your miniscule mortal mind. I can
break you and unmake you until you are comprised of nothing but
pleasure. Just let me in, let me in.
Your flailing legs find
purchase against its torso, but it's like trying to move a brick
wall by kicking it.

Across from you, over the
monster's shoulder, the front door swings wide.

In the doorframe, haloed by the noxious
yellow lamplight from the street like some sort of grungy suburban
angel, stands Doug
(
yourself
)
. They have a
handful of groceries, but as soon as their eyes land on you and
your captor, the flimsy plastic bags fall from their arms. A bag of
apples splits open and its contents roll across the foyer. "Get off
of him!" your roommate shrieks. In less than three seconds, they're
on the monster pinning you to the wall.

The rustling shadow wings that
pooled at the edges of your vision draw longer and coalesce into
something resembling talons. The shadows slam the front door shut
and grasp after Doug's wake. On their hand, that weird silver band
they'd started wearing after the accident glints in the darkness.
Everything plunges into black.

It takes a few moments for your
eyes to adjust, and in the interim the only sensory input you have
to go on is the scrape of the monster's claws against your skin and
the snarling sounds it makes as Doug latches on. The air rushes out
of your lungs when you're dropped on the couch as the monster
releases you. Its high-pitched, ululating wail rings in your
ears.

The next minutes of your life are
painted on your retinas in flashes like a strobe light. First, the
monster rears up, clutching at its skull where Doug has buried
their hands in its eye sockets like you had. The monster's jaw
hangs open, and you can make out dim, cold glow that seems to
emanate from within. Its claws scrabble against Doug's arms,
leaving deep gouges in their arms, but your roommate does not
falter.

Next, you hear a wet popping sound
and then Doug has latched onto something inside the monster's skull
and yanked it free with a bestial howl. They're wreathed in ichor
and smoke like tentacles that licks at both the creature and Doug's
skin in equal measure. The monster drops to the floor, limbs
twitching and throat convulsing around a few gurgling
whimpers.

Then, a fierce fire springs to
life from Doug's right hand, its glow matching that which you had
first glimpsed inside the thing's head. It flickers and gutters for
a moment, casting Doug's face in sinister angles before flaring up
to consume them like some sort of demonic halo. The clawed shadows
skitter away in the fire's chilly light, climbing up the walls and
into the corners of the room and quivering there like cowering
children.

"
Lucien, aspect of
Maltholiath, known as the First Harbinger, Breaker of the Seals,
the Taloned One
,"
Doug intones–and it
is an intonation; their voice is rendered deep and sonorous by
whatever force must surely be riding them now–as they drop to one
knee next to the abomination.
"
You
have broken the most sacred law of this, our mutual game. We
pronounce ourselves your executioner
."
They reach out with their fire and the monster tries to flinch
away.

Doug gathers the creature up in
both hands and rips it asunder like it were made of tissue paper.
They tear it apart until bits of its viscera coat every surface of
the room and the shaking shadows at the corners of the room begin
to flake and fall like noxious snow. You've never seen Doug like
this, wreathed in flame and haggard and so vicious that you feel
sick. Their movements are quick and methodical and, once they seem
satisfied that the monster has been ravaged enough, they pluck a
stray piece of viscera off the carpet.