I saw what was once my wife hunch over in our kitchen only for my ears to meet the sound of screaming and snapping bones. Her body contorted and bent in a way that shouldn’t be possible, each one of her arms displaying two new angles and her legs three. As I stood there frozen in fear for what felt like minutes I finally gathered the courage to do something. With every muscle in my body telling me to stop, I took a step forward.
“joleyne-”
thud
I wasn’t sure of what I was going to say, how could I be? But whatever words that were about to be spoken got interrupted by my wife dropping to the floor. After flinching from the sudden movement I took a few moments to collect myself. I stared down at the contorted body 7 feet in front of me and forced my eyes to keep the position. Bones were jutting out of multiple different parts of her body, blood was starting to pool around her and the most unsettling part was her face. It was completely normal, the face of this thing posing as my wife had no bent bones, no open wounds, not a single abnormality. Hell, she even looked at peace. I feel bad for thinking it but I hoped she was dead. I hoped whatever my wife became died from the blood loss she’s currently laying in. but despite the horror resonating through every part of me i still approached the corpse. I took a step forward, then another, and repeated the process until I found myself in front of it. Not wanting to touch the body, I grabbed the broom to my right, careful not to make an abrupt movement. But before I could prod it, the body sprung up, its head rotating 180 degrees to make eye contact.
Hell no.
I dashed through the hall knocking down anything within my reach to slow it down, but the attempt could only be described as feeble. In a matter of seconds my hands were pinned down and my eyes were shut in pure, unfathomable terror. I pried them open to then meet the monstrosities’ gaze, illuminated by the dancing flames of our fireplace. I looked at its face, and despite it being on a concerningly twisted neck, it was still her face. The only part of my wife’s body that wasn’t mutilated from the transformation. Perfectly still and perfectly blank. Despite the obviously malicious intent of the creature it’s facial expression never changed. Even her eyes were as beautiful as the day I met her. In fact maybe even more so. I met my wifes gaze for my own perfect eternity, examining every part of them. A blue iris with a color so profoundly beautiful it would put any artist who attempted to depict the color in shame, that surrounded an infinitely black pupil that felt more ancient and deep than the void itself. I felt like I could get lost in them, and if I did then who cares?
My wife released her grip while allowing me to hold her beautiful gaze. I looked up at Jolyne as she grabbed her face with both hands to then violently scratch it off. As she ripped off her flesh. I saw specks of white begin to reveal themselves. And once she was finished I saw something too beautiful for it to be a creation of God. hundreds of non blinking eyes resting in her skull staring back at me with what can only be love. There were green eyes, brown eyes, even golden windows to the soul, but I still found myself transfixed with the ones of my wife.
She brushed the back of her hand against my cheek, rubbing a little bit of blood on my face in the process. She was always messy like that. But then I rubbed a little bit of the blood between my fingers while examining it and something started to feel off. Why was it black? Are people supposed to have this many eyes?
Everything about my surroundings felt off, but I couldn’t say why. The wood walls began to warp and the air itself became a dream, something was wrong.
“Hey Jo? Is everything okay?”
My question was met with silence as her grip around my face slowly started to tighten.
“Stop it, you’re hurting me” I grunted
She squeezed tighter and tighter until it felt like my jaw was about to snap in two
“STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT” I screamed as I pushed her off of me, something was wrong.
Without thinking twice I ran out the door while trying to find out what was happening. I didn’t hear any footsteps and I was too scared to look back, but there was still a small part of me telling me not to stop. Unfortunately that small part was proven right when I finally stopped running from exhaustion. I looked behind me and I saw Jolene standing completely still, 10 feet away from me. Her eyes reflected the soft glow of a street lamp as one fell out of her head and began to roll towards me. I should have run away but an all devouring curiosity begged me to stay put. Once the eye met its destination I bent down to get a closer look. Unlike before, I failed to see anything beautiful in the glazed ball of flesh that laid before me. I picked it up and immediately regretted it as my hand got covered in a thin layer of slime. I stared back into it and though no words were said, a conversation was taking place.
Finally I mustered up the courage to ask.
“Is something wrong?”
The eye blinked and in that moment I realized that it was not just any eye, but somehow my own. I looked up and the street was desolate except for the company of a faint, but present sound.
Drip drip drip.
Despite not feeling any blood, I grazed my hand over my face to find a black liquid oozing from my left eye socket. I tried to take a step forward but my skull connected to concrete as I passed out.
When I woke up I was surrounded by blood red sand constantly shifting with a sea of ink darker than the absence of light itself crashing against the beach I stood on. I walked to the shore but felt no sensation as the sand touched the bottom of my feet or when liquid met my skin, almost as if it was phasing through my legs like a phantom’s touch. The black sea touched my chest and the earth below my feet began to rumble. For the first time since entering this bizarre world, I felt something. The sand I stood began to lift itself, building a platform above the water that I now stood on. My gaze became fixated on the shoreline and I saw something, a speck.
I don’t know what it was but I felt like the speck was calling to me. Like if a part of me was missing and if i didn’t reach whatever sat at the edge of my vision i’d stay that way forever. I stepped forward and as I walked the sand continued to build a blood red path before me. After what felt like seconds of travel I found myself before an odd structure.
A circular stone temple with holes about 2 feet in diameter on each of the five pillars that supported it. In the very center of these pillars was a seemingly bottomless pit. After examining the bizarre building I stepped inside to get a closer look but once again the world around me began to shake and with that, an odd, almost alien noise erupted from the pit. I steadied myself on one of the nearby pillars and I noticed something coming out the hole carved into it. It looked like the water surrounding the temple but as I went to touch it a sensation met my skin, it was ice cold and slimy, sending a shiver down my spine along with a sense of dread that quickly faded once I rubbed the mysterious liquid off onto my pants.
I tried to look into the hole but my eyes only met an absence of light. I even stuck my arm into it, feeling the slime along the rough unsealed stone, but despite my arm being longer than the pillar is wide I felt no stopping point to what should’ve ended. Determined to learn its depths I reached further in, stretching my fingertips and pressing my shoulder against the outside of the pillar. And finally, I found it. But it didn’t feel like the stone against the walls, it was soft but also clammy, rubbery but slick with slime. I slid my hands along the material trying to identify what it was, I felt the answer rising to the surface of my mind but before the truth revealed itself, it moved.
Startled, I snatched my hand away and stepped back as I watched a hand emerge from the pillar. The pale, slimy limb dragged its way out of the hole alongst with the rest of the creature’s body. It was a woman. She wore nothing but the viscous liquid coating her ghostly white skin and long black hair. But all of those things were barely of note compared to her eyes, they were the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen. They were a shade of blue too perfect to ever exist in nature with pupils that resembled an eternal void that held both nothing and everything. In these few seconds of seeing her I found myself to be in love with her, but more importantly, I fell in love with the eyes resting so perfectly in her skull. Enamoured, I stepped back in other worldly awe of the nameless woman and watched her every move like my life depended on it. I found myself to be so focused on her that I didn’t notice the same thing happening to the other four pillars.
In almost perfect synchronization, a hand burst from each column and pulled itself out until there was a body to pair with it. 5 different women before me. Each one with unique features and stature but each one having one thing in common. Their eyes. I would say that they were breathtaking but the phrase wouldn’t properly portray just how amazing they were. They weren’t just breathtaking, they were life taking. I wanted to rip out every piece of my essense and put it on a silver platter just to serve it to them. After standing completely still for a few moments, the cosmically divine women simultaneously moved in synchronization. With a malicious neutrality in their mannerisms they went to the edge of the temple, stared out to the shoreline and began to cry black tears into the liquid below.
But the tears pigmentations were not nearly as noteable as the fact that the pupil slowly turned white as they did so. Creating 2 white fleshy balls with a colored ring in the center. They were disgusting. In fact there’s nothing else I would rather not look at in the entirety of the universe, both known and unknown. I felt my stomach churn as vomit rose to the back of my throat but right before the bile could leave my lips I felt at peace as I was reminded of what was once beautiful. I saw all 5 of the women grab their face in unison and dig their fingernails into their skin, finding a crevice of some kind. At first glance most would think it was just a wrinkle but I soon learned that the abnormal lines on their face was a handle of some kind. With both hands on a different cheekbone they pulled outward to reveal a hollow skull that held hundreds of eyes, each one more beautiful than the last. My admiration was then cut short by all of the eyes being drained of their black, the sweet dark pooling at their feet and spilling into the sea below. But just like before the suns I once worshiped have grown cold with disgust holding all the vileness of a pig corpse slowly rotting away as it gives itself to the black specks that tear away at the swine’s rancid flesh.
After the windows to a thousand souls were drained of their black, the corpus creatures turned around and walked to the center of the building and stood at the edge of the pit. They then tilted their heads forwards to dump the fleshy fruits of their labor down the hole and I found myself wondering if the collection of blackless eyes would ever see its end. The five soulless bodies looked at me and closed their faces for my eyes to meet the sight of ten empty eye sockets staring at me with blank expressions that could only suggest cruelty.
Side by side they slowly advanced with an unwavering sense of purpose and intentions that eluded me. I tried to run but as I did the red path that led me here collapsed, sinking into the ocean of void, never to be seen again. In desperation I attempted to jump but before the tension in my legs released each of my limbs were grabbed by a different set of arms. As I struggled against the slime coated hands, the fifth and final woman stepped in front of me and gave me an emotionless stare as they reached out towards my face. i tried to closed my eyes in terror before they were pried open as i was forced to watch the hand growing near. Despite knowing my fate was sealed I continued the struggle, not as an attempt to get away but as a distraction of what was to come. The last thing I saw were 4 fingers touching my eye before the world went dark. I expected to be dead but for some reason I could still feel myself breathing but the relief was cut off as I felt two hands push me off the edge of the building.
I thought I would feel the impact of water hitting my body paired with a splash but the only thing i felt was the sinking feeling in my lower stomach and wind rushing against my face. And for some reason it didn’t stop. After the first few days I was horrified, but found comfort in the fact that I would eventually dehydrate or starve to death, but as those days turned into weeks I realized that mortality is a privilege this world was not merciful enough to give. I don´t know how long i´ve been falling, months I assume, but as I slip through this infinite space I feel my sanity do the same. Sometimes my mind tricks me into thinking that I can still see by repeating visions of my eyes being ripped out of my skull by every horrible creature imaginable but sometimes I see flashes of my old life, though these memories are short lived, they are welcomed moments of respite nonetheless. But as time goes on the frequency and severity of these waking nightmares increase and the short breaks in between become an even rarer occurrence. I don’t know how much longer my mind will live but I hope it eventually conjures an illusion of my death so I no longer have to be aware of my own suffering.
~I miss you Joleyne