ellie

You carry on your lap an oil lantern that burns a dim orange. The weak light casts moving shadows, barely illuminating the dirt path ahead of your horse. The absolute darkness around you is elusive, and you watch it, frowning, as it curls and stretches and dodges the orange glow, crawling under the hooves, hiding under the mane, whispering ancient words against the back of your neck from underneath your hair. Something sinful; something wicked. It licks a wet line from your collarbone to your earlobe, and you shiver, cold hand rubbing your dry skin to soothe.

The horse underneath you has its ears perked and its head snapping at the barest of sounds coming from the pines, or at no sound at all. Beasts like that are so easy to scare – prey animals. You find that you’re no different. 

These woods are cursed, you understand now. Foolish woman, too headstrong, too stubborn to heed the elders’ warnings, too proud for prayers. Always been like that, wayward child, little girl who behaved like a boy catching frogs by the creek, hateful adolescent who let words unbecoming of your title spill from your mouth shamelessly. Foolish adult, who thinks yourself above higher powers and wiser minds. Strong personality, your father used to say. Not fit for a woman; not proper, no husband would tolerate it. Bound to get yourself killed one day, being like this.

You just might.

The vegetation around you looks fabricated, like it’s a mask, made to catch your attention and distract you from what hides beneath. Sometimes the darkness allows you a glimpse of the pines, and you catch just enough to notice how they stretch a little too high, how the branches are a little too long, too crooked, too straight, how the leaves are black and have a strange shape to them, too loopy, too spiky, too round. It’s like someone tried to paint a forest from memory multiple times and forgot what it looked like.

You navigate blindly. Have been navigating blindly for a while. You try to keep the horse going on a straight line, because logic points to an inevitable end that you will reach if you don’t go in circles. This godforsaken forest must end, eventually. It must. You just have to keep moving forward.

Ear-splitting, a howl suddenly rings through the air. Long, guttural, almost sorrowful. So loud that it might have come from inside your own head if it weren’t for the horse stopping dead on its tracks. Your hands grip the reins until your knuckles turn white; you have no weapon to defend yourself against wolves.

No… no. Not wolves. Wolves are creatures of flesh and blood. Whatever thing emitted that howl, it’s made of something else entirely.

Foolish woman, the elder had told you as you’d mounted the horse. Foolish woman, riding to her death so willing. What a waste, what a waste! Pray the Lord keep you from his shadow!

The thin hairs on the back of your neck and arms stand on end. The wind picks up, bringing with it the smell of wet dog, salt and blood, and gruff whispers mumbling in ancient tongues. Something claws at the back of your cloak, trying for your dress, and another shiver runs down your spine. You twist your torso so you’re turning around, painfully so, but the only thing that meets your eyes is the void-like darkness. You’ve never been overly religious.

Lord, see me where I cannot see. Keep my feet upon Your road. Let no shadow call my name, and let the dawn find me alive.

You wonder if God can hear you from this hellhole. Unlikely.

From deep within the pines, a sharp, loud crack of a tree being snapped in half slashes through the air. You hold your breath, count to three, and then you hear it, the deafening thump of trunk meeting ground, louder than thunder. You feel it inside your organs and on your legs as the rumbling travels from the ground to the horse to your body. Your head whips around towards the general direction of it, hair batting against your cheeks. Your eyes catch a white shape, blurry, huge, bolting though the darkness.

A pair of eyes, glowing a mirror of red-yellow, hovering high above the ground.

Your horse betrays you as it screeches an awful braying, standing on its hind legs and launching you off its back.

The sounds become vaguely muted and distant, the world feeling slow, like you’re floating, spinning, spinning, up is down and down is up and your terror is so great you might die from it before you even hit the dirt. The only thing grounding you to this world and not the afterlife is the sudden wave of pure cold that is washing over your entire body, piercing your skin, reaching deep into your bones, hurting in a way that you know only a living being would feel. You briefly entertain the thought that you might’ve plunged into a lake, slowly sinking to the bottom. Foolish woman, the voices of the elders echo inside your head. Foolish woman, foolish woman.

The air is knocked out of your lungs. There is no lake; you’re on the ground. Pebbles dig into your back and legs, then at the palms of your hands as you struggle to sit up. The oil lantern barely survived, lying amidst broken glass, its weak flame still holding on for dear life somehow. The horse is out of control, crying out, one of its hooves barely missing your feet as it stomps and kicks. You scramble to get up on your feet and away from the beast before it crushes you in its frenzy.

Wide-eyed, breath ragged, you lift an unsteady hand and press it to your forehead. Wet warmth meets your fingers, blood tracing a slow path down your temple. You rub your eye, but the blood only gathers there, pooling.

Your feet stay glued in place and your body as rigid as the next tree as you try to calm yourself down. Goosebumps litter your skin, prickling in an unwelcome way, like insects crawling all over you. You can barely see. The darkness is laughing.

Someone is laughing, and it’s not you. It resonates cruelly through the forest, a gravelly voice, silencing everything around. Your blood runs cold.

Lord above, I seek Your presence to keep evil away. Fill me with Your divine light, guarding me from darkness. Help me dwell in Your care. Ward off the shadow from me. 

The horse has gone dead quiet, immobile, standing worryingly still. It stares fixedly at a point beyond the pines. You follow its gaze.

Helpless little thing that you are, all you can do is watch, petrified, as the thing looms above you, grey-white and hulking, taller than the horse, taller than a carriage, its claws slashing through fur and skin and thick muscle and bone as if it all were butter.

You want to scream, but your body doesn’t obey your commands.

The horse's screech is interrupted mid-cry as the devil's claws meet its face in one brutal stroke. Bones give way with sickening cracks, head wrenching to an angle no living thing should bear, and the corpse collapses with a limpness only found in death, blood seeping slow into the ground beneath it. A beast so strong, that has been carrying you for God only knows how long, trusted, steady, gored in less than a second as though it were made of clay.

The intelligent, flashing eyes meet yours.

Once you learned, there are two kinds of fear. The one that hardens into action, focused, targeted, the kind that sharpens the senses and steers the mind into quick reaction – fight. And the one that hollows you from the inside out, reducing you to nothing but an animal, with tunnel vision and dulled senses – flight. Your legs move before you even realize you started running.

Agony flares within your injured head, eyes watering, vision blurring – but that doesn’t stop you, because with this darkness you can’t see much ahead of you anyway. Branches and twigs cut thin lines into your soft skin, curving downwards, clawed hands made out of wood grabbing at you, reaching, wrapping around an ankle and pulling. You fall.

The ghastly pines loom over you, grinning faces, watching you struggle for your life. Another inhuman laugh that sounds closer to a shriek is carried by the wind, horrible, mocking you, foolish woman. Deformed shadows pass you by as you resume your staggering run, shaped like people, like animals, like something unnamable, something that must have come from Hell, carved by the very hands of Satan himself.

The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comf–

The prayer dies on your tongue with a sharp yelp as the darkness licks another wet line on your skin, firm tongue, rougher than should be, from your ankle to your calf to the inside of your knee, and your whole body shakes with the lewdness of it. You kick at nothing, scramble for nothing, shove nothing away, stumbling on your own feet like a newborn.

A sob escapes you. Maybe the first sound you’ve made ever since entering this hell. On the ground below you, a shadow grows. It stretches towards you from ahead, passing beneath your feet, then covering your own shadow behind you, long tendrils morphing into shapes. Towers, a roof, the rectangle outline of something house-like, placing itself around your body, forcing you in, keeping you right in the middle of it.

You look up and ahead. Moonlight filters in through the leaves and from behind a manor.

Everything around you blurs together like wet rag rubbed against freshly painted canvas, the sounds growing muted again as though you’re underwater. Feet moving without you realizing, arms bracing against the pines that are growing thinner, dirt turning into gravel crunching beneath your sore feet. You arrive at the garden.

Statues of angels and devils stand tall in crumbling marble. Bushes of various sizes are shaped into what looks like winged horses – this overgrown, it’s hard to tell. A dried fountain adorns the middle of it, cracked, little stone cherub perched on top of it pointing its poison-tipped arrow towards a maze.

By the end of the garden, two huge statues of angels with their eyes plucked out and bleeding mark the beginning of a short marble stairway, leading directly to the double doors of the manor. You make your way towards it.

The huge silhouette of it is barely distinguishable against the dark sky. Old, older than your elders, older than the legend. Sinking into the dirt, like the ground is its own grave, like it’s fighting its own ruin, denying the weather, defying nature. Spiked, gothic architecture in dark stone imposing, poking the sky with its towers.

Strategically placed, gargoyles track your every movement through intelligent eyes. One of them whispers something to the other in a language you don’t understand, snickering in malice. 

The massive double doors slowly open on their own before you, creaking.

Creeping ivy everywhere inside, strewn on the cracked floor and torn carpet and barely hanging onto the disintegrating walls. Several broken doors ajar, or missing. Odd chandelier made of dark-yellow crystals shattered by the corner of the lobby, forgotten on the floor. Pieces of bricks and shards of glass litter the place, pushed away as you step inside, kicking up a thick layer of dust.

Sparse furniture covered with yellowed sheets, a long table, three silhouettes sat around it and under the sheets like they’re part of the chairs, patiently awaiting supper. Everything looking like it crumbled a hundred years ago, and like it hasn’t been touched for at least twice that amount. In the corner of the lobby, a streak of water leaks from the ceiling and trickles down into a small puddle on the stained carpet.

There is a shape standing by the eroding staircase.

Cloaked from head to toe, dark, so tall its shoulders hunch forward. You make out faint outlines of a face – a crooked nose, a scarred jaw.

“Shouldn’ be ‘ere.”

Gravelly voice, raspy from disuse, spoken slow as if relearning the language.

You exhale shaky air. “I’m sorry, I – got lost.” Small, frightened little thing you are. Taking quick breaths between your words, trembling like a doe in a wolf’s den.

The figure inhales deep, once, then again, quicker, then quicker, like he’s smelling something in the air. You watch his impossibly broad shoulders rising with it. A low groan catches in his throat, reverberating inside you.

You couldn’t take your eyes off him if your life depended on it.

From your peripheral, you catch a warm yellow light glowing from somewhere on the upper floor, like a campfire slowly burning to life on its own, the match an old magic not fit for this world. He tilts his head towards it in a silent beckoning gesture, then he turns, stomping his way up the creaking staircase.

Your eyes follow first, then your legs.

Rotten wood feels soft underneath your feet, threatening to give in under your weight. With each step you take, their creaking gets louder, your feet sinking into them further, holes and missing steps prompting you to brace a hand against the damp wall. Your fingers smooth over patches of black mold and catch on the wallpaper, peeling off like skin revealing layers of putrid flesh and broken bones.

Eventually, you reach the upper floor. The red carpet is beautiful, lush and warm. Mahogany floorboards, you recognize. The finest. A corridor extends ahead of you for a few meters, dark doors with golden handles and intricate carvings closed left and right, except for the very end, where what you see as a bedroom greets you. The chandelier above you hangs low, yellow-colored crystal, candles lit, and you wonder whether he had to duck his head to pass under it.

The mahogany doesn't creak as you make your way towards the bedroom. You pass by landscapes, beautiful pine trees with lush dark-green leaves, Spring, little white flowers blooming from the bushes, streaks of warm sunlight catching on the calm waters of a lake. Dirt path cutting through, a doe sniffing tall grass by the edges of it. You pass by a small town, folk-like, snow covering the V-shaped roofs, warm lights illuminating the streets at night from a few windows. Your house is all lit up, from the kitchen to the bedrooms, and you can almost smell the delicious food the servants are cooking for Christmas. Finally, you pass by a canopy bed. Young woman just like you, dressed in white, lying on her back over messy crimson sheets. Her arms hang from the bed over her head, fingertips almost touching the floor. A human-like demon sits on her stomach, knees drawn up to its chest, turning its head to look at you; a horse-like demon peeking through the thick curtains at her, white eyes and long neck.

You finally arrive at the end of the corridor. A dimly lit bedroom decorated with crimson and gold.

As you step inside, he appears before you. Looks even taller from up-close, even broader, even stronger. He takes the hood off his head. Scarred face, scarred badly, angry lines cutting through an eyebrow, an upper lip, over the bridge of his nose, disappearing down his neck. Sharp teeth belonging to a beast. Pale, pale skin, white-grey, sickly. Eyes so dark they look like mirrors reflecting your own form back at you.

He tears the heavy cloak off with a flourish, revealing his nakedness underneath. A dizzying mixture of fat and strong muscle, disfigured by more scars. His thick thighs ripple as he steps towards you. He smells of dog, of salt, of sweat and blood and something earthy. Your vision swims as you breathe in, head spinning, feverish.

A stuttering breath leaves his mouth, twitching with anticipation. Big cold hands with sharp nails dig into your shoulders, drawing blood effortlessly, smashing you against his chest. He sniffs your hair like it's oxygen, your face, your neck, flattening a thick tongue on your collarbone and licking a slow, wet line up to your earlobe, like he's tasting your skin before eating it. A low groan escapes him, rattling your bones.

His tongue doesn't stop. From your earlobe, he licks the side of your face dripping with blood. Licks it clean. Moaning as he does, pressing his hard cock against your stomach.

"Such sweet thing," he murmurs against your cheek, dragging his nose over your forehead, your eyebrow, your eye, until his blood-dripping mouth is lined up with yours. He drinks in the shaky air you exhale. "Forsook salvation since birth; I can smell it on ya. Stubborn, foolish doe."

Then his lips smash against yours, rough, taking, cold like death's kiss and warm like your blood, which you taste on his tongue as he plunges it past your lips. Not enough. One clawed hand unearths from your shoulder to wrap around your neck, almost fully circling it, thumb under your chin tilting your head up. He bites your bottom lip, then soothes it with his togue, sucking the blood from you slow. You whimper, and feel him react to it with a buck of his hips.

Hungry. Starving. Mind-numbing need to feed, unbelonging even to savage animals, shaking you to your core.

But there needn’t be no haste to devour a meal that sits patiently on the table. Fabric stretches and tears, like unwrapping a gift, ever so slowly – but not gentle; never gentle, with claws and fangs and barely-controlled strength. Soft breasts spilling out, feverish skin meeting cold hands again, nipples pebbled, rough tongue leaving a trail of saliva and blood as it explores. Teeth catch on skin, not breaking it but almost. Head thrown back, gasping for air, bodies moving in sync like waves.

You’re standing tangled in his grasp, then you’re pushed against a wall, then you’re sitting atop something, then you’re lying on your back on a soft mattress with your arms thrown above your head, somehow, all at the same time. He is everywhere, impossibly so, shadow hands cradling the back of your head almost tenderly, cupping your cheeks, tilting your chin. Fingers holding your shoulders, your breasts, your hips and ass and waist, pointy nails digging into your skin and drawing blood for his mouth to suckle on, his tongue never leaving you once, drawing out the very air on your lungs until you feel like passing out; on your neck, biting, nibbing, soothing; on your ankle, licking your skin up to the inside of your knee, sighing contentedly against it, then continuing up, up, on your thighs, on where leg meets torso, then on your cunt.

Head thrown back, you gasp for non-existent air, drowning in your own pleasure.  It’s a terrible sin. There is no prayer for this; no words you could possibly utter out that would make God forgive you. But is it sinful for you, or for him? It takes two to do this. You want more.

He obliges, tongue sinking deeper into you, hands gripping sheets and flesh stronger, moaning louder, crying out of pleasure but never stopping, never stopping once, not even for a second, omnipresent devil suddenly inside you – or maybe not suddenly; maybe it has always been inside you, this darkness, this shadow, this terrible animal born from ash and blood and lapping at the sweat under your breasts, at the crescent-shaped bruises oozing blood, at your face and inside your mouth and inside your cunt and behind your ribcage, licking the bones clean of flesh, biting down on your heart, making you arch under its heavy weight.

Night creature, beast born maybe from you or from something unspeakable or from both, though not forsook by its maker like you were. Shadow enveloping you the way the cloth failed to do so. Half-animal, half-man, something to shoot in between the eyes before it comes any closer, someone to bathe in holy water and burn at the stake. Just like you.

He feeds. Blood, sweat, tears, cum – everything your body has to offer, he takes, and he takes with a foaming mouth and squeezing hands and lidded eyes, unsatiable tongue, raspy murmurs against your skin. Such hunger, unspoken of. Forbidden. Contagious like a disease that leaves you boiling inside your own body. Makes you lick his fingers clean. Makes you bite down where neck meets shoulder. Makes you scratch at arms and backs and grab his head with both hands as though he’ll disappear if you’re not holding on. Makes you trap his face between your thighs, clench around his tongue, push his mouth deeper into you so he doesn't leave your core; forcing him back into the womb.