As I ran further from my house, a wave of emotion had over taken me, my feelings reminiscent of a quickly melting block of ice. Enduring these past few months had shaped my emotional state into nothing more than a hollow, meandering, violent whisper of what it used to be.
The stench of sick that had lingered in my nose so long I forgot what clean air smelled like began to fade in favour of the welcoming smell of crisp autumn leaves. For the first time in a long time, I felt free. It almost felt like a shame that I was going to kill myself.
Wait.
God damnit.
I left in such a rush that I didn’t even grab my fucking gun. I don’t know how long I had been running. I know I left in the early morning, and now the sun was directly over head. Shit. It had to have been hours, right? I had no idea. I had even less idea of where I was. Any direction I turned seemed to just be trees for miles.
I was lost in the middle of woods with no food, no water, and no gun to even fucking shoot myself after seeing my wife turn into a vomit leaking deformity. More of a tumour than a person at this point. God damnit. Tired. Just tired. I spent hours just looking for a way out, but everything just seemed to repeat. I was just going in a circle.
I slumped down into myself as the sun set and the sky darkened. My head throbbed consistently and my breath was haggard, but eventually I fell into a deep, comatic sleep.
I had a dream.
In my dream, My once young, beautiful Marilyn and I lay nude entangled together on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar. The walls, floor, ceiling, and furniture were all a shade of uncomfortably bright red. The decor was fancy, like an expensive hotel.
Marilyn crawled over me, face to face. She smiled. The flesh on her face began to ripple as if there were thousands of ants under her skin, crawling. Her body rapidly grew rough and skeletal, sticking to me like glue. She brought her slender fingers up to her eyes, digging her nails violently into her corneas. She leaned closer, her warping face closing in on mine; her heavy breath smelled like bile. She put her foul mouth on my neck, and I felt a sickening crawling sensation.
I remember suddenly being in front of the mirror, and feeling, now seeing the bugs crawling under my skin, same as Marilyn. I turned around to face her.
The red room was gone. I was in Marilyn and I’d room now. What I saw when I turned around…
I had vomited, in real life I vomited. But I didn’t wake up. I had already woken up. I was awake, in my room, completely naked. I was facing Marilyn on her caught.
Except it tool me moment to even register it as Marilyn
It had grown a thick layer of sandpaper flesh over a 4th of the room, it was translucent, pale, and veiny. In the center, atop what could only be assumed to be a flesh covered cot, was a pulsating figure, looking like a sickly chicken fetus. All the flesh was pulsating.
It’s face was two bloodshot eyes, wet with tears and an inflamed, vomit leaking little hole.
I reached for the nearest object to me, a vase, and swung it as hard as my exhausted arms would allow me. It shattered on impact. The thing that was once my white writhed in pain.
Marilyn’s eyes pleaded up at me.
Maybe it was all my fault.
A year before Marilyn and I married, she fell ill. She was immunocompromised, and I came home with the flu. She caught it, of course, and it began to take a major toll on her health.
She was only my fiancé at the time, and I was still learning how to do all this. In my gullibility, I would take anything to make her feel better.
I was parked in my car at a gas station after driving Marilyn to the hospital. Taking a moment in the car for myself, I heard a knock at the window.
“Hello, friend!”
He was a young man, slightly handsome with long hair and stark blue eyes.
“I don’t have any change.” I said, expecting him to try and panhandle me so that he has some cigarette money.
“I’m not here for change, I’m here to help.” His smile was welcoming when he closed his eyes, but when they were open, he made me feel just a little nauseated. “I know you’re going through some trouble with your girl. I know what can help.”
“Who the fuck are you?!” I snapped, alarmed that this absolute st anger knew what was going on in my private life. I didn’t have any friends who would set this up, and I doubt my fiancé’s friends would know a guy like this. The man held his hands out, cradling a ziplock bag. Within the bag was a pink, squirming creature, resembling a chicken fetus. “Man, what the fuck! What do you want me to do with this you fucking freak!?”
He leaned his face closer to mine, his shut eyed smile setting me into an attentive trance. “Trust me. Feed it to her in any way, alive or dead. It will keep her strong, for as long as she is faithful.
I immediately snapped back to the situation I was in.
As long as she was faithful? As long as she was fucking faithful?
Rage boiled in my blood. I had taken care of her as she deteriorated in front of me, wasting my life to try and keep her happy.
She didn’t know better. She didn’t Know i blended it up and put it into her soup.
But she fucking cheated on me. All I ever did was help her and she cheated on me.
I stepped out of the horrific bedroom and into the kitchen, grabbing the biggest, sharpest knife I could. All I felt was rage. My temple throbbed agonisingly as I walked back to the creature that was once my wife.
I plunged the blade in, as much as I could. Stinking, rotting blood bursting out in clots onto my hands and body. I stabbed until my vision clouded dark with exhaustion, unable to control myself, I slumped onto the cold rough carcass below me.
I was coated in cold, coagulated blood.
Then my eyes shot open. I tried to move, but I couldn’t. I was stuck. I looked down onto my body only to discover I was connected to this thing, no, more than connected. I was part of it now. I was part of her.
Through sickness and through health. I wasn’t faithful to my promise. I guess it goes both ways.