Chapter 05:Bible
Chapter 05: Bible
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Jack's boots tore through the crimson mud with each step, the earth itself seeming to recoil from his presence. The village square had become an open wound - bodies arranged in blasphemous tableaus that mocked divine creation. A crucified farmer formed a twisted scarecrow in the wheat field, his hollowed-out chest cavity stuffed with rotting grain. Three children sat in a perfect circle, their small hands stitched together in prayer, their eyelids sewn shut with coarse black thread.
The crows weren't just watching now - they were *judging*. Their beaks clicked in unison like a jury's tally as they counted Jack's sins. One particularly large carrion bird perched on the church steeple, its feathers glistening unnaturally in the fading light. When it spread its wings, Jack saw they were too large, too *wrong* - the pinions elongated like skeletal fingers.
*"You were always meant for this,"* the wind whispered through dead men's teeth.
Jack's breath came in ragged gasps. His fingernails were torn and bloody - whether from clawing his way out of some nightmare or into one, he couldn't remember. The metallic taste in his mouth suggested both possibilities might be true.
Then - movement. A flicker of pale flesh in the farmhouse window. The glass reflected nothing but empty sky, yet behind it, something had *definitely* moved. The front door swung open with a groan that sounded disturbingly like his mother's voice calling him home for supper.
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The threshold exhaled warm, rancid breath as Jack crossed it. The living room furniture had been arranged with sinister precision:
- The chair by the fire wasn't just warm - the armrests bore the faint impression of *claws* digging into the wood.
- The teacup's contents swirled on their own, forming faces that screamed silently before dissolving into the murk.
- The defaced portrait now wept thick, black tears that crawled upward across the frame toward the ceiling.
The kitchen had transformed into a butcher's wet dream:
- The refrigerator's hum had become a low, guttural chanting. The jars of eyes all turned simultaneously to track Jack's movement.
- The tongue on the cutting board *twitched*, forming words in a language that made Jack's nose bleed.
- The oven's window revealed a shifting mass of shadows that pressed against the glass, forming hands that left greasy smears.
In the bedroom, the closet door stood slightly ajar. From within came the sound of ragged breathing - not Jack's, yet perfectly synchronized with his own. The floorboard creaked as he knelt, revealing not just the book but a nest of writhing black tendrils that caressed its cover lovingly before retreating.
The Bible's inscription now read:
**"Bound in the living flesh of the Lamb. Inscribed in the screams of the eternally damned.A thousand newborn infants for a feast and it was born."**
When Jack touched it, the cover *shuddered* like a lover's gasp. The spine arched toward his hand. Somewhere in the house, a woman began singing a lullaby in his dead sister's voice.
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The Six Days of Creation
Day 1: Let There Be Night
As Jack read the first verse, the words *melted* and reformed before his eyes:
"And the Void said, Let there be hunger: and there was feasting."
The lamp's light turned viscous, dripping onto the floor where it pooled like liquid hatred. The shadow in the corner unfolded itself, revealing a too-thin figure with joints that bent the wrong way. Its smile stretched ear to ear, the teeth not paper but *fingers* - tiny, grasping digits that clicked together in anticipation.
Day 2: The Firmament Cracks
The ceiling didn't just peel back - it *screamed* as it tore. The sky beyond wasn't empty - it was *crowded* with shapes that moved just outside perception. Something vast and segmented pressed against the atmosphere like a worm against a microscope slide. The walls didn't just weep blood - they *sobbed*, their wooden beams creaking like broken ribs with each shuddering breath.
Day 3: Earth's Dark Harvest
The floorboards erupted in a spray of splinters as thick, pulsating roots burst forth. They weren't plants but *veins*, pumping black ichor from some unseen heart. Outside, the grass had grown into grasping tendrils that caressed the corpses lovingly, slipping into open mouths and eye sockets with obscene intimacy. The wheat field rippled, each stalk now tipped with a tiny, screaming mouth.
Day 4: Celestial Deception
The moon's split revealed not emptiness but an *eye* - vast and lidless, its pupil a swirling vortex of screaming faces. The stars weren't lights but *hooks*, each one dangling tattered remnants of souls like grisly fishing trophies. Jack's tears burned like acid as they carved channels down his cheeks, revealing glimpses of something *moving* beneath his skin.
Day 5: The Waters Remember
The well erupted in a geyser of black fluid that smelled of forgotten graves. Shapes moved beneath the surface - not fish but *memories* given flesh, each more terrible than the last. The sink coughed up not just hair and teeth but *whole faces* that dissolved into the drain with pitiful mewling sounds. The pipes throughout the house began to *laugh* - a wet, choking sound.
Day 6: In His Own Image
The corpses didn't just twitch - they *danced*, their movements perfectly synchronized to some infernal rhythm only they could hear. The crows' beaks unhinged to reveal secondary mouths that whispered Jack's name in his father's voice. His reflection in the window didn't just wink - it *stepped forward*, pressing against the glass until cracks spiderwebbed outward from its forehead.
Day 7: The Rest That Never Comes
The house's sigh became a death rattle that went on too long. The book's purr vibrated in Jack's bones, rearranging something fundamental inside him. When the closet door finally swung open, the thing that emerged wasn't just wearing Jack's face - it wore his *memories*, his *soul*, stretched over its frame like ill-fitting skin. Its smile showed every mistake Jack had ever made, each one gleaming like a tooth.
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The Uncreation
The village didn't just scream - it *unraveled*. Houses folded inward like flowers at dusk, their windows blinking shut like sleepy eyes. The church steeple bent double as if in prayer, then snapped with a sound like a breaking spine. The ground didn't just open - it *parted* in worship, revealing endless depths where things that had been buried before the first dawn stretched their aching limbs.
The Bible's laughter became a chorus of every voice Jack had ever loved - all twisted into something *hungry*. The words didn't just change - they *consumed* the original text, leaving wounds in the parchment that wept black ichor:
**"And the Void saw every thing that had been unmade, and behold, it was ravenous."**
Jack's doppelgänger knelt beside his paralyzed form, its breath smelling of opened graves and childhood nightmares. As it leaned close, Jack realized with dawning horror that this was no monster - this was what he'd always been beneath the skin. The first bite didn't come from the creature's mouth, but from his *own* - his teeth tearing into his wrist with animalistic frenzy as the world came apart around them.
The last thing Jack understood before the darkness took him was the awful truth - this wasn't damnation. This was *revelation*. The Bible hadn't shown him hell. It had shown him *home*.
And somewhere in the collapsing village, a lone crow began to recite the Lord's Prayer backward in Jack's own voice.