Date Night
There was no order in her brain. She was covered in warm, in goo. Her trembling fingers slid together, feeling the stickiness of the gore she was wearing as her eyes remained pinched shut.
“Open your eyes, Fran.”
No.
The voice scraped through her, stilling the electronic pulses through her nervous system, carving away at the crevasses within her that compiled her being. It was no human voice, and it formed no words. It only projected meaning into her, knowing. Something alien, other-worldly, forcing the wish that she would just explode, be rid of her own fleshy containment.
But James. James was all over her. The gooey mess hanging from her shoulders, her arms—he had exploded. No sooner had their words been uttered together, their eyes met over the drawn septagram on the floor of her flat did he explode, decorating her from head to toe with his own innards.
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. It was just a joke, a lark. This is Rochester for crying out loud! This is the real world, the world where science prevails, where magic is for idiots who believe it’s real! James, sweet James from her Alcoholics Anonymous group, brought the book over as a joke, a laugh! InterUniversal Demonology, by Robert Reicher was clearly a gimmick, a farce. “I obviously couldn’t bring a bottle of wine over,” he had said, as she invited him in. “So I thought we’d get drunk on the silliness of life.” It was funny. He was a funny date. They weren’t actually supposed to summon something from an alternative universal Hell!
“But you did.”
No.
“Open your eyes. Look at me, Fran. Look at what you’ve done.”
NO!
She couldn’t breath. All she could smell was the fading warmth of her date, the copper of this blood, the stink of his intestines. Her tongue wagged inside her mouth, wanting to remove the pieces of him from her lips which she clenched closed as fiercely as she did her eyes. She couldn’t see this, she couldn’t face this. This wasn’t real!
Cool air swept through the flat, chilling her damp body, the wet of her clothes. It was the creature, she knew it was. The cold felt acrid, the noise of its voice was tinged a burnt, glowing red. Nothing followed the laws of her own universe. Sounds were touch, tastes were color, and the cold burned and pinched at her arms.
“See me,” the creature demanded.
Tears burned to be released, but she couldn’t open her lids, not even a fraction. She squeezed them tighter and tighter until her eyes ached. They would stay closed. Until this all went away, they would stay closed.
Something swirled around her, temperatures existing without sense—intense heat, biting cold, seeping through her pores, through her bloodstream. It was in her, in her veins, her nerves, working its way to her brain, like an overwhelming brain freeze in the scorch of desert sun.
She felt nauseous as it sifted through her, driving repulsion from her, making her gag, drawing bile from her stomach to her throat, singeing her esophagus with its acids. It rummaged through her, running its fingers through her memories, her thoughts, the connections of everything that made her, her. Fran winced as it made curious noises inside her skull, feeling it hot in her ears, dampening her lobes. It’s stench of excrement exhaled through her, she could taste it on her tongue, the back of her throat as it mixed with her stomach’s juices, and clung to the hairs in her nose.
It leaked itself through her and she needed a drink.
A stiff one.
Anything amber. Anything with a percentage in the double digits.
The thing melted away, leaving craving, the aching for that liquid gold. A drink. A drink would help it, make this all better. She could handle this thing, if she could just get herself a drink.
She wondered briefly if the newsagents as shut, if she could just nip—
An excitement stirred in her, not of her own, in her brain, in her veins. This wasn’t her. No, she didn’t want the drink. It was the thing! The thing wanted it! It wanted her to have it!
“No!” she shouted!
The image of clouds forming into the arm of the gods, holding an arrow and shooting, was vivid behind her eyes. It was the television advert for Strongbow. Cider. She did, she did want the drink. It was telling her that which she already knew but denied.
“No, I won’t,” she whispered, more convincing herself than telling the thing.
If it had lips, she could feel them curling away from its teeth into a smile. The stench of rotting feces rode her breath and she coughed at the demon’s delight filling her. Some echoing memory was drawing closer, riding the back of a horse-drawn carriage from the nineteenth century through the London fog, an image she must have seen in the movies. The clop of the horse brought the sound, the memory closer. It was her mother, singing to her. The faint song echoed in the mist, “Hush little darling, don’t say a word. Mama’s gunna buy you a mocking bird…”
Behind her eyelids, Fran was entranced. The carriage was closed, dark, fuzzy around the edges. But as it came close, it was perfectly clear, the song still distant, but louder. As it passed, Fran’s eyes followed the image in her mind, looking to the back of it, where the carriage indented, and she could see her mother sitting on her bed when she was a little girl, and her little-girl-self holding her Piglet toy under her arm.
Fran’s four-year-old daughter, Kaz, still had that Piglet. It was with her now at Becky’s house, who would be bringing her home in a few hours.
Oh god! Kaz!
The key in the front door turned, the latch unlocked. A gust of English air wafted in, hitting Fran like a ton of bricks.
“Mommy!” rang the little voice of Kaz.
“No!” Fran shouted, opening her eyes to see the closed front door, the empty, gore-splattered room, and the twisted, black and crimson creature with gnarled horns decorating its body, and yellow eyes framed by curling, jagged teeth from its bottom jaw, staring straight at her.
“Gotchya,” it said.
Author's Note:
Image was found on a forum on NexusMods. You can see the original by clicking the image. I did not create this image, but the link will take you to where I obtained it.
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