Bodies Are Disgusting

by S. Gates

  Please forgive me, you say, and you don't mean for fixing her body. Her brow is furrowed in confusion.

  "What'd you do?"

  Just remember that I love you, you say. She shifts as though to sit up, so you withdraw your hand and step away. You can't let her see you this way. You would rather her last memory of you be your most recent fight than what you have become.

  Sensing your train of thought, Ori slips their hand into yours. "Time to go," they say, tugging on you gently.

  You nod, letting your fingers fall from Amanda's face. Your dark god's tendrils flick behind your sternum and you are gone like a whisper.

  You are immediately transposed next to Simon, who sleeps where you left him splayed awkwardly on his bed. What damage he carries is not as straightforward as what you just mended, but you have bone-deep knowledge that it can be done. The hand not gripping Ori finds its way to Simon's stubbled cheek.

  You know that his damage isn't physical, and it will take a much more invasive technique to bring him around. Tentatively, you extend yourself through your hand and into his skin.

  The room shifts. You no longer stand next to Simon's bed. Ori is no longer at your side. Instead you see a room that seems to have no ceiling, filled from top-to-bottom with bookshelves. This, you realize, must be how Simon visualizes his mind. You glance down at yourself and find that most of the changes your god wrought have disappeared. Instinctively, you understand that this must be because it's how your friend sees you rather than a true reflection of what you are.

  "Simon?" you call. The stacks seem to amplify your voice until the echo is almost unbearable. He doesn't respond. Of course he doesn't. It couldn't be that easy. Squaring your shoulders, you pick an aisle of books and set off down it.

  The further from your point of entry you stray, the more moth-eaten and rotted things become. Letting your hand drift along the spines of the books, you catch little glimpses of things: pieces of data he presumably learned in school, snatches of memories from his youth, fleeting impressions of feelings he experienced at some point of time or another. It feels like skimming the surface of his soul. Which, you suppose, you may well be doing.

  Finally, you come to what you can only assume is the heart of Simon's internal library. It's blown apart and charred, the shelves weeping ink like blood and the circulation desk twisted beyond all recognition. There is still no sign of the library's owner.

  It comes to you then: you won't find a representation of him here, not really. This place is too damaged and he has fled. The true scope of work nearly staggers you. If there is any hope to be had of bringing Simon back to himself, you have to fix this... somehow.

  You start simply at first. You pick up scattered books, run your fingers over them, relish in the essence of your friend they carry. His soul is laid bare to you as you rearrange these pieces, and the more of them you touch, the more you feel like you truly know him. You revisit items you'd shelved, caressing the spines like you would a beloved pet. The damaged ones leave you feeling empty and rotten and you seize upon that. Through your will, you scoop out the festering feelings and fill the voids with better things, bits of yourself, bits of your friendship with Simon.

  Slowly, painstakingly, you impose order into the chaos. Tomes are reshelved, debris swept away. The ink-blood smears your arms up to the elbows, but it's stopped flowing. You see flickers of light out of the corner of your eye, the far-off lamps turning themselves on in the more remote corners of Simon's library. Cobwebs disappear, singed volumes look less forlorn. It's still obvious that there's been a cataclysm of some sort in this library's past, but now it looks like a distant thing.

  Except for the desk. It still dominates the center of the place, twisted and charred and crusted with inky ichor. There's no avoiding it, you have to set it right if you want Simon to be well again. There isn't any true need for breathing here, but it's so deeply ingrained into you to take a deep breath before steeling yourself that you mime it just the same. You grab the desk with both hands, curling your fingers under what remains of the desktop and bracing your feet to heft it upright again.

  * * *

  It's one in the morning and you are not yourself.

  You're a bit drunk, if the warmth in your face and the slight wobble to the ground is any indication, and you're fumbling a little with your key. For some reason (you aren't quite convinced that it's the alcohol), it just refuses to slide into the deadbolt on the front door. From behind, you hear an inpatient snort before another hand steadied yours and slides the key home. Your face flushes further, and it isn't the booze.

  The door swings wide and you stumble in. your house is dim (the kitchen light's on), and your roommate is nowhere to be seen. It's just you, your drunkenness, and the man who keeps a steadying grip on your hips.

  It's stupid and you feel like you're fourteen years old again, but you can't help sniggering a little at the prospect that you might actually get laid tonight. You can feel the dopey grin on your face as you turn to meet Luke's eyes (there is a strange disconnect because you feel the visceral reaction of your heart fluttering, but you are distantly aware of your entire being recoiling at the sight of him). His expression is a queer mix of fondness, desire, and abject frustration, all together with something you can't quite name (it's possessiveness, the sort one feels toward a prized sports car or a race horse, how can Simon not see it). Your stomach feels full of excited little moths.

  Luke (Lucien) slides his fingers underneath your shirt. "I want you, Simon." They leave trails of fire and lust on your skin.

  You swallow twice and the keys slip through your grasp in a clatter before you can manage to get out a weak sort of "Oh–okay."

  He guides you to the couch, pushes you firmly into its cushions, starts working open the buttons on your horrifically plaid shirt. Your head lolls back and your hands rise to try to work at the buckle of his belt but Luke bats your hands away. It's all right. You're too drunk to have the coordination for operating such a complicated garment. Best to just lay back and enjoy it.

  Luke slides your shirt over your shoulders and viciously finishes the job of untucking your undershirt that you'd begun earlier while dancing in the bar. He licks at your abdomen, fingers moving to unbutton your skinny jeans. You're not hard yet, too drunk for a full-on erection, but your dick's definitely paying attention to Luke's every move. One of your hands drifts to his hair and stays there as you pet the part of it that's freshly buzzed.

  Your gaze locks on him through your eyelashes (you're not sleepy, you're really not, but the booze is making it hard to keep your eyes open), and you can't help but shiver as your eyes meet. Luke's gaze is downright predatory and you're willing to bet that he's going to be an animal when you get him in the sack (metaphorically speaking because, whoa, you are not sober enough to operate stairs right now in addition to belt buckles and buttons).

  Without breaking eye contact, he unzips your jeans and pushes them down your legs. His nails dig into your skin, not enough to hurt but enough to let you know that they're present and accounted for. It's enough to fully get your dick in the game, at least, but now your jockeys are a little too uncomfortable. He must be psychic, though, because he hooks his fingers in the waistband of your shorts and pulls them down, too. Still not breaking eye contact, his lips find the base of it and his tongue traces up your frenum in too-hot slow motion.

  "Ah, fuck!"

  Luke smirks. "Yeah, that's the plan." He pulls himself up your body and nips at your earlobe.

  When he pulls away, you catch a glint of something out of the corner of your eye. His eyes seem frosted over, like a cataract sufferer's where once they had been an inviting hazel. His skin has taken on a sallow sheen. "You okay?" you slur.

  His lips press into a hard line before pulling back into a grim rictus of a smile. "I want you," he states. He has more teeth than he should. More teeth than you can count. His face seems to split open like a rotten fruit, flesh flaking. Your blood runs cold and you try t
o scramble up the back of the couch to get away.

  At the edges of your vision, you think you can see the rustling of restless wings in the shadows. Luke's face presses toward you and it's less like he leaned over and more like everything around you grew so warped and distorted that it was only natural that his visage should be next to yours. Your back scrapes against the wallpaper. You're out of places to go. His hands, clawlike now and pale like bones, slam into the wall to either side of you.

  "Join me," Luke says. His voice nearly drips with desire. Under other circumstances, you would find it sexy. Now, it makes your skin feel oily and soiled.

  "What the fuck is wrong with you?" To your credit, your voice is steady.

  The monstrous thing that was once Luke snarls. Join with me! The words reverberate through you such that you hear them with your bones. Join with me now! One of its claws pushes against your chest, the talons digging into the tender flesh of your sides while the other slides down your hip. The looming, toothy face nuzzles against your neck. I will give you everything. Do not fight me.

  You feel something slimy slide down your collarbone, and that is all you can stand. Your hands fly to the monster's face, your fingernails scrabble against its eye sockets. With it pressing you against the wall, your feet are free to kick at where you vaguely recall Luke's solar plexus being. Its skin, if you can call it such, is clammy under your fingers, and you nearly gag when your fingers find something that's warm and gooey.

  The monster cackles. It runs along every nerve, an electric spark that has nothing to do with sensuality; instead, it's like being tased. The flapping of wings is an audible thing now. The shadows writhe with winged things you can't quite make out. "Get the fuck away from me!"

  The slimy thing, you realize, is the monster's tongue. It wraps around your neck, even as you crook your fingers in its eye sockets and scoop out the viscous goop you've made of its eyeballs. One of the claws at your hip slips around to trace patterns of simmering pain in the skin at the small of your back. The monster's tongue unwinds from around your throat and makes its way over your jaw to swipe across your lips.

  The thing's face is almost completely devoid of skin, all of it having dropped off onto the floor and couch before you. Now it's simply bone and teeth as long as your fingers set into something that almost looks like a beak. The tongue lolls out from its gaping open maw, grinning like a plague-ridden carrion bird. It rubs its beak against your cheek, letting the tips of its fangs scrape the topmost layers of your skin away. Its eye sockets are so huge now that you could practically cram your fists into them, but nothing you do even fazes it.

  Its tongue finds its way across your lips again, slower this time, leaving a trail of ooze over them that would make you want to vomit if you weren't trying your very hardest to make sure it couldn't get past them. The palm of the "hand" holding you against the wall scoots down your chest until the heel of the "palm" (if such words can really be ascribed to the creature's appendages) rests against your mons. Oh, dear Simon, does this form not please you? It pleases me.

  You can't respond. All you can do is shove your hands more forcefully into where you think its eyes ought to be and hope that you finally hit something that will make it shy away in pain. Its palm scoots lower until it cups your flaccid cock. The surface of it is chilly, just this side of freezing. Join with me, Simon. I will show you such pleasures that you cannot even begin to comprehend with your miniscule mortal mind. I can break you and unmake you until you are comprised of nothing but pleasure. Just let me in, let me in. Your flailing legs find purchase against its torso, but it's like trying to move a brick wall by kicking it.

  Across from you, over the monster's shoulder, the front door swings wide.

  In the doorframe, haloed by the noxious yellow lamplight from the street like some sort of grungy suburban angel, stands Doug (yourself). They have a handful of groceries, but as soon as their eyes land on you and your captor, the flimsy plastic bags fall from their arms. A bag of apples splits open and its contents roll across the foyer. "Get off of him!" your roommate shrieks. In less than three seconds, they're on the monster pinning you to the wall.

  The rustling shadow wings that pooled at the edges of your vision draw longer and coalesce into something resembling talons. The shadows slam the front door shut and grasp after Doug's wake. On their hand, that weird silver band they'd started wearing after the accident glints in the darkness. Everything plunges into black.

  It takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust, and in the interim the only sensory input you have to go on is the scrape of the monster's claws against your skin and the snarling sounds it makes as Doug latches on. The air rushes out of your lungs when you're dropped on the couch as the monster releases you. Its high-pitched, ululating wail rings in your ears.

  The next minutes of your life are painted on your retinas in flashes like a strobe light. First, the monster rears up, clutching at its skull where Doug has buried their hands in its eye sockets like you had. The monster's jaw hangs open, and you can make out dim, cold glow that seems to emanate from within. Its claws scrabble against Doug's arms, leaving deep gouges in their arms, but your roommate does not falter.

  Next, you hear a wet popping sound and then Doug has latched onto something inside the monster's skull and yanked it free with a bestial howl. They're wreathed in ichor and smoke like tentacles that licks at both the creature and Doug's skin in equal measure. The monster drops to the floor, limbs twitching and throat convulsing around a few gurgling whimpers.

  Then, a fierce fire springs to life from Doug's right hand, its glow matching that which you had first glimpsed inside the thing's head. It flickers and gutters for a moment, casting Doug's face in sinister angles before flaring up to consume them like some sort of demonic halo. The clawed shadows skitter away in the fire's chilly light, climbing up the walls and into the corners of the room and quivering there like cowering children.

  "Lucien, aspect of Maltholiath, known as the First Harbinger, Breaker of the Seals, the Taloned One," Doug intones–and it is an intonation; their voice is rendered deep and sonorous by whatever force must surely be riding them now–as they drop to one knee next to the abomination. "You have broken the most sacred law of this, our mutual game. We pronounce ourselves your executioner." They reach out with their fire and the monster tries to flinch away.

  Doug gathers the creature up in both hands and rips it asunder like it were made of tissue paper. They tear it apart until bits of its viscera coat every surface of the room and the shaking shadows at the corners of the room begin to flake and fall like noxious snow. You've never seen Doug like this, wreathed in flame and haggard and so vicious that you feel sick. Their movements are quick and methodical and, once they seem satisfied that the monster has been ravaged enough, they pluck a stray piece of viscera off the carpet.

  The air between you hangs, charged with electricity and an increasingly cloying smell of ozone and burning hair. Doug's gaze meets your own, and their eyes are so black and empty that you suddenly understand what Nietzsche may have alluded to when he talked about abysses and staring. "Simon Hawke Glyndon, you are my witness that the sentence has been consummated," Doug says. Then they take the viscera and swallow it whole, the way a shark might. They pick up more pieces and cram them into their mouth by the fistful, barely taking any time between gulps to breathe or wipe the ooze off their chin.

  Once they seem satisfied that they've ingested enough of Luke's (Lucien's) remains, they reach for you with one gore-slicked hand. Their fingers still flicker with silvery flame as they catch the thin chain of Luke's necklace. In a swift jerking motion, the chain snaps and slithers onto the floor between you.

  You scream.

  * * *

  You're yourself again, back in the library. In your hands, you hold some of Lucien's remains, still dripping black like ink. At least now you know what happened after you blacked out and why you found Simon catatonic on the floor. Breaking one's connection to the go
d that's chosen them is traumatic even under the most benign circumstances. What happened when Ori judged Lucien... It's a wonder Simon hadn't had an aneurysm.

  The black liquid drips onto the floor by your feet. You have one option left.

  Like you had when Ori had ridden you (that's the only explanation for what you just witnessed), you cram the remains of Lucien into your mouth and choke them down. They taste similar to the growth you'd pulled from Amanda, but sharper and not as aged. The circulation desk is no longer on its side, but it's still twisted. You run your palms along it as you had all of the books that you reshelved so carefully.

  That isn't what happened, you think. All that happened was Luke bailed on you and you passed out. I came home and tucked you into bed. You think this over and over as you rub the desk down, and, under your palms it starts to return to something like its former state. You use your will and the fondness you have for your friend to spackle over the cracks and seams until you've created something that stands whole and new and made mostly from the essence of yourself.

  * * *

  Simon stirs, and you pull away. His brow is smooth and his breathing is deep and even. You know he will be fine.

  All right, you tell Ori as you take his hand into your own, I'm done. It's time.

  Your dark god's fingers move within you, and your body moves in tandem. Everything shifts. You're gone from your old house. Your old life.

  You have a destiny to fulfill now.

  I have been kept waiting long enough.

  Thank you very much for reading. If you enjoyed this story, please consider rating and reviewing it on your favorite retailer's site!

  About S. Gates

  S. Gates is a near-thirty IT professional who has enjoyed writing and drawing since they were very young. They currently live in the wilds of suburban Atlanta with their spouse, their cat, and a couple of roommates.