Page 4 of These Eternal Bones
I can’t stifle the sob that works into my throat. Unbidden, it bursts from me like a choked rattle. That’s when I feelit. The inky substance slips over my skin and pulls me, dragging me down, down, down until it wraps and caresses. The very blood in my veins stops and vibrates, asif it’s being pulled in reverse. Agony like I’ve never felt before fizzles my mind until my thoughts wane. My skin burns and bubbles, but only on the inside, until I’m a strand of hair pulled too tightly. It goes on like that for seconds, years, an eternity until everything stops, precious seconds lost in purgatory as I feel myself…stop.
My blood.
My pounding heart.
The very vital functions of me.
For a moment, I’m weighted, pressed deep into the dirt, pushed down with the worms and larva.
For a moment, I’ve always been here. Like there are versions of me littered amongst the forest, buried deep in its grasp.
And it’s inside me.
Killing me.
Touching and invading.
Until it’s not, my functions resuming with a snap.
I scream.
Such a guttural sound rakes and claws from my lungs. My heart moves, and with mottled vision, I jerk myself upright, swaying from the ground only to meet it again with harsh finality the moment my body decides it’s had enough.
4
Lilac & Dominion
Who is She - I Monster
Him
The stench of filth touched me long before I reached the small dying woman trampling through my woods. It’s far from the first time one of the townspeople got too curious, too brave, a wayward child lost wandering into the misted, ever-changing forest. Nothing about her speaks to anything supernatural, hardly enough to gain my attention. The proud oak presses into my back as I watch her chest rising with labored breaths, her blood tinged with the rancid scent of infection. I linger, curling my lips at the lifeless body of the fox. Emboldened after hundreds of years by his own boredom, it’s as good as any torment to the fae. Of course, he would come. He always has. A scourge-like wretched species. Often annoying to kill, no one more so than the fox. Even in his small form, he’s a hellish fighter. A rattlingcough draws my eyes back to the small trembling woman; it’s a shame she’s infected and riddled with filth. I could almost imagine a great deal of beauty underneath it all. Her last moments are no doubt terrified, being nothing more than a toy to the bored fae, my touch pushing what strength she had left from her tired blood.
With the shifting of the wind, everything changes. My feet pulling me forward at a blinding speed until I’m there, inches from her sweat soaked face, dragging her through my lungs like an addict. If my heart could beat, no doubt it would still in my chest. All illusions of indifference wiped away with a familiar brutality, a newfound…hope.The dangerous kind that has never done me any favors. An aching want that flares to life in my bones.
My dominion had answered a call my soul had not yet heard. It had reached for her. Itknew. The desperation, terror, and rot nearly enough to hide the scent oflilac.Her tanned skin is mottled with dirt, but I see it clearly, every hue in reddened strips of flesh scraped and raw from her journey here. She’s light, so very delicate as I gather her in my arms, listening to the frenzied cadence of her heart. Her fevered flesh pressing against me sets off like a bomb, exhilarating and horrifying, beautiful.
Mine.
Molly
Pain.
The smell of mildew and dust.
Then something heavy and endlessly dark.
I can feel the sick in my throat, but my body won’t listen to my command to sit as I vomit.
Hands.
Gentle and kind, adoring as they rove over every inch of me.
They help until they don’t. I immediately feel their loss deeper than my flesh.
It makes what touches me next far more jarring, that invasion hitting me again, glimpses of the dark, pervasive woods assaulting my brain, but I am far too comfortable for that. Here, there are no rocks to sink into as I go down. My blood boils in my veins, my wailing sounding far more feral than the fox.
Am I dead?
