389. The worst of night, 8

(Rose)

Ana hasn't returned all day.

I don't know how I would tell her...

At nightfall, I was about finishing burying Bleue's voluminous body, with the nameless child left inside of her.

The day was so silent, it felt heavy.

All I kept was Bleue's golden masks, and her coat made out from her own feathers.

I shovelled a little earth over them.

Then water sipping through the mud I dug already began filling the hole.

My head hurts terribly.

On the morrow at dawn, I will leave this city.

I don't want to stay in the town where you died.

I need to move away from here...

I set myself ready for an atrocious night of sorrow.

The nightmares wouldn't be the worst of it unfortunately.

~

The painful thing with nightmares born from grief is that the story you experience becomes worse each time your mind is repeating it to you.

The quiet death of Bleue quickly became a gruesome and highly traumatic slaughter.

Blood flying everywhere as her chest and tummy exploded. The child enduring a similar fate before my eyes.

It was gross and painful.

And her death was obviously not the end of my suffering.

In my nightmares, hers continued as well.

She was in horrible pain from within, trapped in her decaying body like a ghoul.

I had a nightmare where she was drowning in the hole I buried her.

I woke up in panic at that realisation, almost ready to run in the middle of the night to unbury her, to save her.

But after a few seconds of blind panic in the night, my reason woke up as well, and I stood there hopeless.

It had just been an awful bad dream... I didn't kill her by burying her alive.

And I couldn't save her...

The night went on like that, painfully.

My tormented reality feeding too many terrifying bad dreams, surrounding me while I was unable to rest, while the sunlight was missing to wash all these spectres away.

A night in an internal hell.

I have to endure.

Tomorrow, the sun will rise again...

Endure Rose. You will make it.

You will see the light again...

~

One of the first things I learnt in this world, was that the death of an organism doesn't always means it will fully decay and return straight away to the earth.

I learnt the hard way in my very first day and nights, that some avid organisms, or rather microscopic life forms, saw such dying organisms, abandoned structures, as a mass or opportunities to claim.

Including the brain and its juicy memories, for what would be late to decay.

And thus, the dead could sometime return as ghouls, more or less conscious, being a mix of what survived of their old self, and their beastly new owner's will, trying to reach awareness.

A new incomplete birth of life.

And a random recycling of dead flesh. The repurposed tissues tried with the life form to find a new way, a new metabolic balance that might last.

It didn't work very well most of the time.

But I saw life take opportunities to grow out of anything and everything it could find.

Avidly.

Violently.

A full corpse of a mammal, with a still born child, was like cool rain over a desert.

Something would grow.

Something.

There was not even a doubt about it.

After Bleue was gone, what would take her place inside her flesh?

I should have burnt her body.

I realised my mistake too late, and that would soon be my regret.

I should have burnt her while I could.

~

Something took over her corpse.

Probably the dead body of the child first.

And then, it began eating and absorbing methodically all the available materials from Bleue's remains.

I was still lost in disarray and sad dreams while it happened.

I would realise far too late I should not have buried her.

That thing rebuilt itself over her silhouette.

That would be my last nightmare of that awful night.

I saw it rise.

It wasn't Bleue anymore, but it would look a lot like her.

I saw her eyes.

It's bright blue eyes...

And its mouth curving into a sadistic smile.

I woke up abruptly, drenched in terror.

I realised.

It was already dawn outside.

I grabbed flammable alcohol, a lighter, and ran as fast as I could.

This terror was me remembering what reality would become.

The sun was still far away, nowhere to be seen in the sky.

Just one night had passed.

Maybe I still would have time?

Reality wasn't so kind. I arrived too late.

Over the ground where I had laid Bleue to rest, already stood her silhouette.

A shadowy figure. Her wings had devolved into two thin arms with a single claw, almost like spider legs.

She turned around to face me.

Out of the darkness of her figure, her blue eyes were almost gleaming.

Along with her growing smile as she saw me there, all frozen and lost.

O - Good morning Rose.

My hands and knees betrayed me.

~

It's steadily walking toward me while I'm unable to think nor move, petrified in shock.

O - Aren't you going to kiss me for good morning? Oh, I've missed you...

The voice then become more aggressive.

O - I've really missed you Rose!

There's more anger than anything in her voice.

I can't react. Some part of me still can't accept this reality. Dark blue is walking toward me, smiling greatly.

I have a flash of what happened to me the last time I truly met her.

The next thing I know, I'm trying to run for my life in panic.

The world is warping around me.

I lose my balance as I fall, as if the ground too was betraying me.

The shadow of doom reaches me from behind as I weep there. I can almost see her smile over her shadow on the ground as well. It's burning the back of my head.

O - Oh Rose... It's been too long... I want to play.

I'm trying to reawaken my fighter side. Come on Rose, fight!

I'm too weak, I'm too sad. I can't react fast enough.

The pain in my bones thereafter breaking under her feet just make me scream. I can't think anymore.

I can't escape.

I'm trying to crawl away, a mess. My legs are broken. My face is covered with mud, sweat, tears, snot, saliva and now blood.

I'm gasping for air as I see the claws of her wings stabbing my hands like nails. I scream, I cry, I wail.

Pain is filling my lungs and my mind is beginning to collapse.

I'm about to pass out from the pain.

Today is probably my last I begin to think.

I collapse, unable to become wrath in my sorrow. The last thing I hear is her giggling.

~

I wish I had died that day.

For the worst was still to come.

I soon realised I wasn't still alive thanks to the mercy of that demon.

She wanted to torture me longer. Far longer...

So she kept me alive, whether I liked it or not.

I woke up in a large building, being dragged on the ground by the hair.

The pain worried me less than my inability to move any of my limbs.

My body being dragged was almost foreign to me. As if I had been decapitated, but still was alive.

The terror of such imprisonment inside my own body destroyed me a little further. I couldn't cope.

Ogre dragged my numb body inside a large decrepit hall. It had its charm the other day, now it was horrible.

She rolled me over my tummy like a broken doll.

O - It wouldn't be fun if you can't feel anything. Let me arrange your spine just enough.

I felt through the vibrations reaching my neck that she opened my back like a fruit. She butchered me.

I couldn't react. I couldn't feel pain yet, only terror.

She did something to my nerves, and fire suddenly poured down my flesh. Then I was only screaming in pain, as I could feel my broken bones all over and my back skinned alive.

Ogre was laughing as I was trying to crawl away again from her, unable to think anything outside primal fear and pain.

She turned me over with a kick. My scorched back fell in contact with the rocky ground. The pain intensity surging through me petrified me. My breath is stuck.

Ogre is standing proud over me.

O - It was so fun when you fucked me Rose... Now it should be my turn. What do you say?

My terror grows beyond anything I knew.

I see an erect penis grow on her body.

My terror becomes panic and explodes. I pass out again.

~