Print Page
Send to FriendEver slowly and gradually rising to his hands and knees, Derrick lifted his aching head to look around. On one corner to the right he saw a water heater right next to a furnace. Upon the ceiling had been dim yellow lights, with tiny specks of dust dancing before the beams of light. The acrid aroma of dust pervaded the entire area, burning Derrick's sinuses and making his eyes water. He groaned and coughed as he lifted his head another couple of inches, feeling his headache begin to subside. To his left, Derrick could see a flight of stairs, which would hopefully lead out of wherever his kidnappers had taken him. And below his chin had been a hand mirror. Other than that, the basement had been empty of furniture and objects. With the dreary concrete walls, leaving him not much more than fifty square feet of total area, along with black wire mesh barricading the basement windows, preventing anyone from being able to squeeze through and escape, it seemed almost like a prison cell as much as it had a damp basement.
Derrick gazed momentarily at his long, thin face. Dust smudged his cheeks, and he could see his watering brown eyes had grown bloodshot. He blinked as a teardrop fell from his eyes, dissolving a thin line over the patch of dirt over his left cheek. He brushed a hand over his disheveled brown hair, blinking his watering eyes dry as he did so. As he scrutinized his reflection, he noticed no gashes, bruises, or traces of blood upon any of the contours of his face, nothing suggesting that he had been knocked unconscious. How he had gotten here had been anyone's guess, for he couldn't even remember leaving his home or much of anything for that matter within the past couple of days.
He seemed to have lost all sense of time. It couldn't have been more than a couple days since he had last worked a shift as assistant manager of the local supermarket. It seemed like barely two minutes had passed since his shift ended, yet at the same time the memory seemed to have happened more than a decade ago. His vision grayed and focused as his headache intensified, only to taper off all over again while he struggled to remember what had happened after he had left, his mind remaining a blank slate.
He examined his right inner forearm, where he found a small puncture wound, where someone must've injected some kind of a chemical substance into his bloodstream. He deduced that that had been how they managed to kidnap him and bring him here. The flesh around the wound had been soft and had taken on a grayish hue while the rest of his body remained tanned from the summer sun. He wondered uneasily if the substance might have negative long-term effects on his health and sighed dismally. Forget about that now, he thought, with the feeling of fuzzy fingers lightly squeezing his brain. Right now I gotta figure out how to get out of here.
Derrick quickly rose to his feet, feeling a wave of vertigo hit him, the room becoming a gray blur and spinning before his eyes, from the sudden, sharp motion. He moaned, barely stifling a shriek of agony as what felt like a vice gripped his temples and squeezed his brain inside. The headache and dizziness subsided, yet he wobbled, his body swaying left and right as his head lolled over his shoulders. He took a step forward, toward the stairs, and his entire body nearly toppled forward as he took a few more steps and threw out his hands to break a potential fall. Outside, through the small basement windows, the sun glared brightly across the clear blue sky. During this time of year, it should have been easily a hundred degrees, with an oppressive level of humidity that made it seem twice that. Whatever they had put in Derrick's body must still have had lingering effects upon him, for despite the punishing heat and humidity that would have usually worn him down, Derrick was freezing. He wrapped his arms around his body and shivered fiercely from the cold, imagining white plums of smoke gusting from his nose and lips with each shallow breath, but none came. A liquid he at first assumed to be blood trickled from the corner of his lips, but when he dabbed at his chin and examined the fluid, he saw that it had been black and slightly thinner than blood would have been. The substance ran down his finger, a black drop leaving behind a translucent brown trail over his skin.
As Derrick took another step, his head tilting forward and the dark concrete floor dancing before his eyes, he saw that he had been dressed in his white, short-sleeved button-down shirt, black dress pants and shoes, and his burgundy tie. It had been his work clothes, which confirmed that whoever his captors had been, they would have either kidnapped him while he had either been leaving for work or going into work. His shirt was now only half tucked in, and covered with wrinkles. While it had once been white, a light layering of dust tarnished its purity, leaving it behind a dull silver-brown hue over the fabric as the tie hung loosely around his neck.
As Derrick felt most of his strength returning, he took another couple of steps toward the stairs. He still trembling slightly and still felt cold air biting every inch of his body, but the dizziness was nearly gone now, along with his headache. If he were somehow able to escape, he would still have to have a doctor examine him ASAP, just in case there were any long-term effects. He still felt drained. He blinked his watery eyes, but the fatigue refused to leave. He struggled to suck air into his lungs, but no matter how heavily he breathed, his body seemed unsatisfied with the amount of oxygen he was able to absorb. Panic should have seized him, and in a way it had, but the fear seemed to be purely a cognizant matter, for as he put his hand over his chest, he felt his heart beating ever slowly. In his mind was the frantic urgency to get out of this house, but however compelling it might have been, it was a cold instinct. His mind hurried his body along, yet the body moved sluggishly, devoid of any adrenaline rush or the fight-or-flight reflexes that should have normally taken hold.
Derrick lurched forward up the wooden stairs, which creaked and bent beneath his weight, some of them threatening to snap apart should he remain too long or step too hard upon them. They were old and warped, and within each crack grew mold and mildew. Derrick took each step, knowing that the next could collapse beneath his weight and send him careening down the stairs. He grabbed the handrail for support and felt the sharp splinters biting into his palm sharply. He winced from the pain, which only held him momentarily as he pressed on, nearing the top of the stairs. Up ahead, the door appeared to split in two and both duplicates circled before him slowly in a clockwise rotation.
Once he had regained focus, seeing before his eyes only one door standing stationary before him, Derrick reached over with a trembling hand, fumbling twice before his fingers finally closed around the door knob. He twisted, but the doorknob would not budge. He tried turning the doorknob again, harder this time while gritting his teeth, but still could not get the door to open. Derrick raised a trembling arm and brought it down against the wooden door like a hammer, thrashing against and again, screaming hoarsely as he did so. "What the fuck is goin' on here!" he hollered as his eyes watered and he now hammered both fists frantically against the door. Derrick stopped and stood, feeling his knees buckling as he bowed his head and rested his hands over his lap. He was still freezing, and was sweating profusely, which chilled him even more. But with all the terror that seized his mind, rendering his thoughts nearly incoherent, still his heart remained at a steady, slowing pace.
Derrick took a step back, feeling the small of his back arch sharply as his head shot back. He flailed his arms, his right one reaching in vain for the handrail in an effort to break his fall, as his legs carried him down the flight of steps seemingly of their own accord, quickly, hastily, skipping three or four steps at a time. When the heel of his left foot slammed down against the bottom step, Derrick finally toppled over, feeling air rushing against his back. His hands were the first to hit the ground; they clapped hard—simultaneously—with the concrete floor, taking half of the impact. He had just a few minutes to feel the stinging of his palms and elbows hitting the cement before the back of his head followed, slamming hard against the ground as well. He lay there for a few minutes, gazing up at the flies, which seemed to multiply as they hovered around the dull beams of light that bloomed into discolored prisms, before Derrick finally lost consciousness.
From what seemed like a distance through the syrupy darkness, Derrick heard a shrill, excited female voice chant: "Arise, Derrick Sinclair, arise!"
Derrick's eyes fluttered open, and he lay sprawled upon the cold basement floor, only he felt fully healed from whatever injuries or adverse reactions he had sustained from whatever chemical his captors had injected him with. His headache was gone, as if it had never existed to begin with, and he suffered no dizzy spells, no upset stomach. Indeed he now felt blissfully refreshed, almost reborn, his entire body full of energy. With little effort, he sprang to his feet, still feeling the sense of dread and terror that had seized him before, but feeling strengthened as well, as though perhaps he might be able to shatter the locked door to splinters with a single blow.
There was a woman standing in front of him, by the stairs, her body completely covered in a loose-fitting burgundy robe, and her head was covered by a hood, leaving only shadows exposed, clouding her face. She slowly approached Derrick, and he noticed that she smelled horrible, the fetid stench of rotting meat that had been left outside, exposed to the July sun for over a week. It was a deathly, decomposing stench, and the closer she came to him, the worse it assailed his nose and left a sour feeling in his gut. Flies droned as the noxious fumes of this woman nearly suffocated him. He gagged, feeling the remnants of his last meal (whenever that had been) scaling the back of his throat.
"You're a very lucky man, you know that, Mister Sinclair?" she said, giggling softly.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Derrick croaked and gagged.
"You have no idea how lucky you really are," the woman went on, "but you'll learn soon enough."
She removed her hood, and Derrick soon found out where the putrid odor was coming from as she exposed her head in all its horror for her to see. Her blue eyes seemed to be the only radiant, healthy tissue, whereas the rest of her appeared dead and rotting. Her face, once bloated from the previous stage of decomposition, was now collapsed, with flesh that took on a more creamy consistency. Much of her flesh had peeled off, leaving the tissue beneath exposed, which had darkened, appearing bronze in a few areas and completely black in others. The flies and maggots feasting upon her rotting body swarmed so thickly they were almost like another layer of skin themselves, moving about, the flies swarming, crawling, and flying as the maggots slithered and burrowed into her. Her lipless mouth was locked in a leering grin and almost all of her teeth had fallen out; the few that remained were loose nubs, cracked and brown. Within her withered gums, where one of her incisors had once been, the head of a maggot protrudes almost shyly, appearing to hesitate, before timidly crawling to the surface. Even more maggots deposit from what remained of her nose and slithered along her cheek and philtrum. The woman stroked her gloved hand through her scalp, brushing through the crude remains of her thinning hair. That hair was now dark and slack, like a tangled mass of stringy mold clinging to her darkened scalp, where hundreds of flies and larvae devoured her flesh.
"I am Sister Annie, and I will guide you on your journey."
"Please," Derrick croaked, pleading as he gagged and stared at Sister Annie, aghast by what he had seen and in disbelief. The living corpse now stood barely three inches from him, bombarding him in the vile stench of putrescence. Once more, his sour stomach lurched, and he struggled, gasping, to hold the contents of his stomach down. "Please just let me out of here."
Sister Annie said nothing, but instead lunged forward and kissed Derrick in the mouth. Since her lips had fully decayed, it was her rancid gums that locked against his lips as she plunged her tongue deep into his mouth. The woman tasted even worse than she smelled; the taste of rotting meat coated his tongue, prickled his throat, and Derrick suddenly could no longer fight the urge to vomit. He shook and squirmed, struggling to be free, but Annie held him even tighter, her blackened gums even more firmly pressed against his lips as her rancid tongue probed against the his own tongue and the roof of his mouth. Derrick doubled-over, forcing Annie's back to arch sharply. His lips and her gums remained firmly locked together, yet her grip over his body loosened as finally Derrick vomited into the corpse's mouth. They parted from the kiss, and the vomit splashed against Annie's face. Derrick coughed the last of the bile from his throat and gazed at Annie, who was now covered in the stringy yellow and red vomit, which masked her face and brimmed from the inside of her mouth.
As he wiped the vomit from his lips with the back of his hands, still feeling nauseous, yet gratified from the act, he expected the decrepit woman to be enraged by his transgression. Yet as he looked at her, he saw only amusement upon her rotted countenance. Sister Annie threw her head back and burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "Oh my, I almost forgot," she said when she had finally regained her composure, still chuckling softly. "You prefer them fresh, don't you?"
Derrick's eyes widened as his body shuddered with guilt, but he said nothing. Phantom eyes spurned from the darkness, bearing down upon him with the crushing weight of their accusatory stares.
He half-expected the same judgment from this walking carcass, yet Sister Annie's grin only widened. "Well don't worry, my dear, we'll take very good care of your needs," she said, giggling softly as she hurried back up the stairs.
Later on (how much time had passed was anyone's guess, as time seemed to have lost all meaning for him throughout his endless stay within the basement) three more figures draped in burgundy robes descended the stairs. One of them had been bulkier than the other two, standing at over six-foot four, broad-shouldered and perhaps muscular. He held one end of a black plastic garbage back, tied shut by its flaps, while another of the two thinner, more petite of the trio held the other. Flies swarmed each of the three, droning, as their putrid stench of decomposition suddenly filled the room, making Derrick feel nauseous all over again. Were it not for the fact that he had vomited once already, and his stomach was now empty, he surely would have thrown up now from the noxious fumes of putrescence. As it was now, his sour gut lurched forward as his eyes watered and the nausea clung to the back of his throat.
The one who had not helped to carry the contents of the garbage bag now approached Derrick, and when she spoke, he recognized the guttural, yet innocent, exuberant feminine voice as that of Sister Annie. "He is the father," she said, pointing toward the larger, bulkier robed man. "And he is the son," she pointed to the smaller, more willowy of the two.
"And who are you supposed to be?" Derrick croaked queasily.
She giggled. "I am the sister and the daughter, but also the sacred virgin."
Derrick coughed, put his hand over his mouth, and gagged.
The Father and the Son gently placed the bag near one of the windows and slowly turned and ascended the stairs. The bag lay there, unmoving, the texture of the bag wrinkling as it gleamed in the setting sun.
Sister Annie pointed to the bag now and said: "That is our gift to you, to help ease you through the transition."
"Please, let me go," Derrick pleaded. "I don't know what you're planning, but there must be someone else better qualified than I am. Hell, maybe even someone willing to go through with it."
Annie shook her head. "You're the only one qualified. You're the only one we know about in all of Tibernicus that has your delectable tastes."
Derrick stood dumbfounded. "But how could you possibly know..." he began, but was too flustered to continue.
She giggled mischievously. "You should be careful what you post on the Internet."
Derrick opened his mouth, but could think of nothing to say. The very thought of what she implied was a violation to his privacy. These people had raped him through words he had posted a single message on an Internet Message board a year ago when he had found others to discuss his morbid secret, one he could never tell anyone else for fear of being fired from his job and being disowned from his family. They must have seen his location, hacked into the board for his IP, and traced him to his home. Derrick knew of the dangers on the Internet, of cyber-stalkers and identity theft. He thought he had been careful with his online activities, but apparently not careful enough.
"Did anyone ever tell you how cute you are when you're angry and freaked out?" Annie giggled, and through her hood and the shadows that surrounded her decaying face, Derrick could imagine that she was batting an eroded eyelash at him.
The vile stench of decomposition lingered within the room after the undead had left, but eventually, it had either faded, or else Derrick had gotten used to the stench and no longer noticed it permeating the four walls. He stared, transfixed by the black garbage bag left by the window, wondering what their "gift" to him had been. Perhaps it had been a trap of some kind, and once he had opened it, the contents would finish him off. However, even if that were the case, it wasn't as though he had anything to lose, for he saw no way of getting out of this alive. They had brought him no food or water for whatever amount of time he had spent down here, and although he hadn't felt hungry or thirsty, he knew that eventually he would die of dehydration or starvation if they brought him no supplies. Eventually, curiosity had gotten the better of him, and since he saw no reason to forgo that curiosity, he quickly headed toward the "gift".
Derrick's fingers sank into the surface of the bag, whose texture around his fingers sunk, stretched, whitened, until his fingers punctured holes through the bag, ripping and clawing it open. He stretched the seams farther apart, and within the newly torn, expanding hole, he saw a pallid female face gazing back up at him with glassy eyes. He pulled even harder than before, until the entire head had been exposed, and then dipped his arms all the way into the bag, placing them beneath the woman's armpits, and quickly pulled the corpse out of the bag, dragging her away from the window, toward the center of the basement where Derrick had spent most of his time in captivity.
Sister Annie's voice echoed through his mind:
You prefer them FRESH, don't you? Well don't worry, my dear, we'll take very good care of your needs.
That is our gift to you, to help ease you through the transition.
Derrick shuddered, sickened with guilt upon the realization that in some indirect way, he had been to blame for this woman's death. They had killed her in his name.
He examined the corpse for any signs of trauma: broken bones, gashes, lacerations, or contusions that could indicate a possible cause of death. He found nothing. The body was still warm, intact, and completely unharmed. Upon closer examination, he noticed a small puncture wound just above her collar bone, and although he was no professional coroner, given what he had to work with, he deduced that it was possible that she had been killed when they had injected a poison into her bloodstream.
Derrick had wanted to believe that her death would have been painless, that she had felt only the faintest prick of the needle entering her, before the thickening darkness of death swallowed her, but he knew that most likely it wasn't the case. Poisons such as cyanide and arsenic took their sweet time with their victim, making them sick, writhing in agony and intense nausea as they tore away their insides. Thus, not only had she been killed in his name, but may have been tortured as well. Intellectually, Derrick knew that he was not to blame, that he was a victim as well of their morbid agenda, but was still sickened with pangs of guilt that not only he, but others as well, had to die because of what had happened, all because he had posted a single message on an online forum a year ago.
Derrick caught his hand idly wandering over the woman's breast, pinching the nipple lightly before closing his fingers upon the cup of her breast. He felt the tingle of arousal in his stiffening penis and for a minute was lost in bliss before his eyes widened, alarmed, and he immediately removed his hand from her breast. This was no time to think about sex, damn it! He had to think of a way to get out of this situation, and fast, before they finally killed him as well.
Oh, but indeed it had been just the way Derrick had liked them. The idea of having sex with a long-dead corpse that was past the stage of rigor mortis, whose body had been blackened and was breaking down, falling apart, and covered in flies and maggots sickened Derrick Sinclair as it would any normal person. Oh, but a fresh corpse, one who had died just now, the body still warm, the hue still healthy, now that—
But this was no time for such lewd thoughts. It was time for planning, for strategies of escape and survival. And also, it was a time to seek answers.
Derrick recognized the deceased. Her name was Jen Winston, age twenty-five.
He remembered the night when they had dated, both at the tender age of sixteen. He had almost lost his virginity to her. They both sat together, parked at the side of a rural two-lane road, where dense forests of oaks and pines stood beyond the horizon. The crescent moon reflected itself from the hood of his used car, which had now been rusting in many places, but was still street-legal and still got him where he needed to go. The stars twinkled in the clear black sky as crickets chirped from a distance He gazed lustfully at her, while she smiled at him and brushed her hand through her shoulder-length ebony hair. As he held her hand tenderly, she put her arm around his shoulder and kissed him lightly over the cheek.
"I love you," he whispered seductively into her ear.
"It's only our first date," she giggled, smiling warmly.
"I know, but you're so beautiful."
He cupped his hand around her breast, and she grinned at him, blushing a little, but approving of the gesture. Her hands wandered around his crotch, her palm pressing teasingly against his hardness. "You're cute," she said, and kissed his lips.
Derrick reached over and kissed her back, forcing his tongue down her throat as he squeezed her tightly against his body. He now lay on top of her in the passenger seat, moaning loudly in between kisses as he felt her breasts pressing tightly against his chest. He wanted her more than anything else at that moment, wanted to feel what it would be like to be inside her. He humped her fiercely, feeling his penis throb and ache with hardness inside his pants. It was as his hands wandered to his crotch to unzip his fly that he felt her stiffen, and then squirm from beneath him. She gave a moan of protest, but Derrick couldn't understand what she was saying.
"Stop...please...stop!"
Her fingers dug sharply into the nape of his neck.
Derrick grunted loudly in frustration and withdrew his advance. They sat now, he frustrated, while she bowed her head shamefully, unable to face him. He hated having to stop, right when his blood was flowing, when the sex was just about to get intense. But what choice did he have? Had he gone on despite her protests, it would have been rape, and he would have been unable to live with himself after. Plus she could press charges on him and his life would have been ruined that very instant. He sighed, gripping the steering wheel with anger as he turned the key in the ignition and heard the engine hum into life. He wanted to punch the steering wheel, cursing loudly, but such blatant displays of anger would only worsen the situation. Instead, he bit his lip almost hard enough to draw blood as his penis continued to pitch a tent within his pants, the erection still demanding satisfaction.
"I'm sorry," Jen whispered meekly.
He looked at her, struggling to hide his resentment, and said nothing.
Derrick Sinclair had known even before this incident that he had been a necrophiliac. Even before he knew what "necrophiliac" meant, he had known that there was something highly erotic about having sex with a corpse. Some of his wet dreams had involved sex with a corpse, still fresh after having been dead for only a very short time, and his fantasies involved the same kinds of situations. As a child, he was fascinated by death, how people died, the many theories surrounding what happened to the soul after they passed on, the many stages of decomposition, anything and everything having to do with the grave. That fascination manifested itself into a fetish.
But while he hadn't discovered his necrophilia because of Jennifer Winston, the situation had helped to validate his morbid urges. Had she been a corpse, she could not protest against his sexual advances, and there would be no way that he could have raped or violated her, because what he was fucking would have been a corpse, once living, but now nothing more than an inanimate object, a shell of what it had once been, lacking emotion, cognition, and free will. Aside from abstinence, necrophilia was the only surefire way to completely prevent unwanted pregnancies (if only they'd mention that in sex education), and Derrick liked to think that it at least reduced the chances of contracting an STD as well. It was better than masturbation, for he had breasts to squeeze and suckle, sumptuous lips to kiss, and orifices with which to insert his turgid penis. The only problem was that it was illegal, because of what he considered to be ignorant, bigoted moral outrage.
It had been nine years since he had seen Jennifer Winston, for the most part. During high school, he had seen her in the halls a couple of times, and had even been in some of the same classes as her, but her presence left him feeling awkward and dirty, and the mere thought of even saying "hi" to her had been unbearable. Given her reaction when she saw him walking in the hall, he figured that she had felt the same way about him.
Even after all these years, he had recognized the corpse as that of Jennifer Winston. Her mouth was no longer full of braces as it had been when she was sixteen, and she looked older now, but even in death, her glistening blue eyes still possessed that same sense of radiance, perhaps even more so now, at least to Derrick's perspective.
He had had sex a couple of times; some had been with past girlfriends, while others were meaningless one-night stands. But never had he gotten the chance to have sex with an actual corpse, never could he live out what others would consider his gruesome fantasies. Had the opportunity arisen, he had always wondered if he would take it, or be scared off by the potential ramifications. He had always wanted to work in a morgue, but the temptation to molest the bodies would surely be too great.
As his hands absently fumbled at his belt, unbuckling it, unzipping his fly, and undoing his pants, Derrick felt almost appalled that thoughts of sex could have even crossed his mind in such a dire situation. Although there was a sense of dread, his penis remained erect, throbbing, begging for use now. What is wrong with me? he asked himself, slightly perturbed. I'm probably gonna end up dead, and here I am, about to fuck a corpse. Yet when he thought of his own impending demise, the thought of sex seemed that much more logical. While this opportunity was one he believed he would never have, a part of him had always yearned for this. Since he was probably about to die anyway, didn't it make the most sense to achieve that what he had always wanted, to have one last pleasure in life, one final request? In a perverse way, hadn't this been sort of like what the Make a Wish Foundation had done for terminally ill children; giving them what they desired most in life, giving them one final chance at happiness before they passed on?
The sex had been completely devoid of emotion or romance, and had instead been a primal, animalistic affair, as well as one of selfishness, for she felt nothing, and the only satisfaction that mattered, the only satisfaction that was even possible had been his own. He rode her fiercely, thrusting his fully erect cock into her cunt again and again, harder and faster each time as his hands clawed at her breasts. Kissing her had been nowhere near as good as kissing a living girl, for her mouth remained dry, her tongue limp as he probed his tongue inside her and trailed it along the inside of her mouth. But the rest of it had been every bit as exhilarating as he had hoped it would be. She remained quiet as his sexual grunts, moans, and howls echoed throughout the basement, holding her limp body in his arms as he continued to fuck her. Finally, his entire body stiffened as his back arched, and with a blissful cry, he climaxed, leaving his semen to cool on her abdomen, and collapsed next to her, breathing heavily, panting. It was a blissful, satisfying exhaustion.
Derrick lay there, naked from the waist down, for a while, grinning, his arms and legs splayed out as his chest rose and fell. The lights slightly burned his eyes, but he didn't mind much. He felt like nothing could spoil his mood now. His frustration had disintegrated; the lust he felt nine years ago had finally been satisfied. If he died now, he would die in the blissful afterglow of what he had done. And in fucking Jennifer Winston, he felt as though a burden of humiliation and rejection had finally been lifted. Even if he hadn't dwelled, or even thought about that incident much, it was still nice to finally have some closure on the whole ordeal. It hadn't been Jenny Winston herself, for she had been gone, and no consent was needed. But the fact that it was her corpse made it that much more endearing.
As he slowly put his pants and shoes back on, Derrick rose into a sitting position and gazed at Jen's corpse for a little while longer. The semen was cooling and drying upon her abdomen. Although a few flies had begun to settle on her, her body had yet to show any outward signs of deterioration.
Derrick shuddered in revulsion as a couple of those flies began to settle on him a well.
It did not take long for Derrick Sinclair to realize that he was decomposing at a seemingly accelerated rate.
Night had fallen, though the room remained dimly illuminated from the lights hanging from the ceiling. Swarms of flies filled the room, and little else could be heard above their droning symphony that threatened to drive Derrick mad. A few of the flies hovered around the beams of light, but most of them swarmed and crawled over Derrick. He shuddered in deep revulsion, for although he was not afraid of insects, he still loathed their presence. Perhaps they were an important part of the ecosystem, without which nothing would decay, and frogs, birds, and other animals would have nothing to feed upon. But at the same time they were filthy vermin, bringing aggravation and pestilence. Flies were a symbol of filth, of advance decay, for a fresh corpse, one who had just died but a few minutes ago, was nearly free from visible insect invasion.
The allure of the recently deceased would beckon him forward. They were innocent, uncorrupt by age. In a short time, that purity became tainted as rigor mortis set in, as the insects began to gather, as the corpse's former innocence became tarnished. It was like beginning life as a sheltered child, sweet and innocent, until puberty set in, and they began to swear, to smoke, use drugs, and have unprotected sex, sliding further down into a life of degeneracy. Like this very town Derrick had lived in all his life, once an innocent, peaceful suburban community, but slowly growing more and more corrupt, as violence, vandalism, and gang activity ran more and more rampant until the very town itself was swallowed in a sea of chaos. Oh, if only the innocence and safety of the town could somehow be regain, or better yet, never lost, Derrick thought wistfully, and then added: If only I could have a corpse that never decomposed, but stayed fresh and innocent forever. Alas, he knew that to be impossible, for in time, all corpses must lose their beauty, and that same rate of decomposition, of sliding further from order and beauty into chaos was now happening to him, while he was still alive. On an academic scale, he would have found this development intriguing were it not happening to him. Decomposition, as with all aspects of death, had always morbidly fascinated him; it was never something he would have wanted to experience, however, just as the prospect had been so unappealing sexually.
Putrefaction has now set in, and his entire body had blackened. He took one look in the hand mirror that rested by where he had lain earlier that day, appalled by the reflection that looked back at him. As with Sister Annie, his eyes had not decayed, but remained intact. His vision never grayed, never blurred, but remained sharp throughout the ordeal, as had his hearing and his ability to think never clouded. His movements, cognition, and emotions remained as healthy as they were. Through the mirror, his eyes widened in horror, two human eyeballs within decaying sockets. The rest of his face had a dark gray, almost blackish hue, and had bloated as had the rest of his body. From his right nostril, a maggot dangled, like a runner of mucous, before the tail (or head, depending on which end it was) wriggled, wagging into the air before disappearing up his nose. What was left of his thinning hair had matted against his scalp like moldy seaweed.
As he gazed upon his reflection, Derrick cringed both in disgust and horror and his grip against the hilt of the mirror tightened. He recoiled, looking away as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. With a harsh gagging sound that tightened his throat, he tossed the mirror aside like a Frisbee, saw it spin in the air a couple of times, before his crashed against the wall, the glass shattering like a clash of thunder.
What's happening to me? Derrick thought, struggling against his mounting panic.
His shirt had now been drenched in the fluids his body now secreted. Once white, it was now darker; more olive in color and blackening still as more and more fluids soaked into the already sodden fabric, which now had a waxy quality to it. It clung to his bloated body, feeling much tighter than before, peeling off at a few folds as he moved and shuddered, only to coat that area of flesh once more.
Derrick held both arms before his eyes and they too were nearly blackened entirely. The palms of his hands as well as the pads of his fingers remained white, but even they had been waxy and bloated. Even they, like the rest of his body, were moist with rot. He clenched his hands into fists with no stiffness in movement, flailing his arms back and forth and then flapping them up and down like a bird in flight, astonished that they still worked the same as they had before he began to decay.
Derrick Sinclair's entire body was decaying, yet aside from his grotesque appearance, physically, he felt as though he were the pillar of good health.
He cried out in horror nevertheless.
Hours passed and the moon glinted from the darkened sky, through the wire mesh over the basement window.
The decomposition advanced even further.
Derrick's flesh had collapsed, revealing the bronzed and darkening muscles through his forearm. He no longer had the mirror since it had been smashed; it was just as well, for he no longer wanted to see what his face looked like. Gazing over his forearms had been daunting enough. What remained of his flattened, creamy flesh clung loosely as maggots continued to burrow through his flesh and more and more flies and beetles continued to swarm around him. He poked his tongue out upon the realization that he no longer had lips; his teeth, now fully exposed, became loose and wobbled in his gums. His mouth and nose were filled with maggots and he shuddered in revulsion, hoping this nightmare would soon end.
In time, the darkened night sky gradually lit up as the sun finally rose over the horizon, its rays penetrating through the window as once more specks of dust hovered through the beams of light. As that darkness of night continued to drag on, seemingly spanning years, Derrick half-expected that when the sun finally did rise, he would be disintegrate, and almost welcomed that fate. But alas, vampires were harmed by sunlight, not ghouls or zombies. As the sun shimmered over the morbid flesh of his decaying arm, he remained unharmed, feeling not even a sudden heat washing over his body, as he would have previously from the humidity this summer had brought. No longer was he human, he could be sure of that. He was a form of the undead, but not a zombie either, for he did not wander aimlessly and blindly, chanting "brains" over and over again in a slurred drone. He was cognizant. He was something else entirely.
It was not long after dawn that Derrick heard a series of creaking footsteps descending. An elongated shadow formed over the dismal gray cement walls, before Sister Annie appeared in the dim light, her entire body still cloaked, but her head now fully exposed, grinning that black, nearly toothless, decaying grin of hers. She appeared just as horrible as she had upon her previous two visits, still a walking corpse, yet if she emitted any foul odors, Derrick could no longer notice them.
"Good morning," she said cheerfully as she quickly approached him. "And how are you doing this fine day."
Derrick wanted to laugh, but glowered at her instead. "How do you think I'm doing, you fucking bitch? Just look at me, look at what you did to me!"
Sister Annie giggled. "I think you're cute. You certainly look better than you did before."
"I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder," he sighed.
Annie wrapped her arms around Derrick's body in a tight embrace as she rubbed herself against his sides, moaning softly and giggling once more as she rested her head on his shoulder. Derrick wondered: If she were to kiss him, would he vomit in her mouth again? Perhaps he would, but right now he wasn't feeling very optimistic.
"I know it seems strange at first, but in time, you'll grow to like the idea."
Derrick's unease worsened, but he could think of no retort.
"So did you enjoy the girl last night?"
"Yeah," he muttered truthfully, almost ashamed to admit it.
Annie frowned. "And still you hate us; even after all we've done for you, even after allowing you to live out your fantasies, giving you just what you wanted, exactly how you wanted it?"
More and more Derrick felt ashamed of what he had done. He knew he should have left Jennifer Winston's corpse alone. As his self-loathing increased, he wondered what could have possibly possessed him to have sexual intercourse, to give these sick bastards exactly what they wanted. Sure he was a necropheliac. Sure she had already been dead, and he had not killed her and she would remain dead regardless of his actions. Sure there was no rational argument that could make the case that by desecrating her corpse, Jennifer Winston was somehow harmed, even beyond the grave. Wherever one's soul journeyed to after death (if there was such a thing as a soul), they were detached from their mortal body, cast away like a hermit crab discarding a used shell that would no longer fit its growing frame. Regardless of all these facts, Derrick now felt dirty, felt guilty of his perverse actions, which, if his family were to find out, they would disown him. Worst of all was that he had played right into their game, done exactly what these twisted ghouls had wanted him to do and followed right along with their twisted agenda. Perhaps now Derrick was being punished for his actions.
"Please," Derrick croaked, "take it off."
"Excuse me?"
"This curse, please take it off," he pleaded again. He felt a sob building within his throat, threatening to distort his voice, yet no tears spilled from his eyes. "Whatever voodoo you have on me, take it off. Take off the curse; I don't want to be like you."
"But you were meant for this role, to be with us, a part of the future."
"I never chose it, you forced me into this, you fucking bitch, now take it off! I want to be normal, goddamn it, I don't want to be a fucking freak like you!"
Sister Annie cooed and moaned almost seductively. The sounds she made might have filled Derrick with arousal, yet her appearance made the entire ordeal creepy rather than alluring. She was not his type, for decomposition had taken her too far, and she seemed all too pleased with her current state of decay, and that was spookier still. "That would be impossible. Your destiny is with me, with us, spreading the gift of the undead. We're soul mates, you and I. You are destined to join the Unholy Trinity, to elope with me, and our love will bind us together for eternity."
Love? Derrick thought, feeling not panic, but mounting rage and revulsion. I could never love you. Your very touch sickens me to the core.
"I love you, Derrick Sinclair," she sighed blissfully, "more than words can say."
Immediately, Derrick's arms fastened tightly around Sister Annie's throat, squeezing tightly. He cried out in anger as he pressed down, bringing the woman to her knees as his hands tightened even further. Annie gasped as her arms flailed helplessly, the fingertips frantically caressing Derrick's sides, struggling for purchase in a futile attempt at defending herself. Derrick looked deep into her eyes, which filled not with elation, lust, or perverse love, but now widened with utter horror. She was a leering corpse, in advanced stages of decomposition, her face contorted painfully as though she had been tortured to death. Derrick tightened his grip, pushing further, and Annie's back arched abruptly as she threw out her arms, her hands gripping his wrists loosely as her mouth flew open, brimming with flies and maggots. She croaked once more, and the next thing Derrick heard was the loud crack of her breaking neck. Her body convulsed once more and went limp, her legs sliding out from under her. Derrick released his vice-like grip from her neck and she collapsed and lay sprawled on the floor, technically a fresh corpse, but nevertheless in more advanced stages of decomposition.
Derrick's eyes veered to the side, toward the stairs that Sister Annie had previously descended, and hurried toward them himself. They creaked loudly as he ran up them two at a time, threatening to collapse under his sudden weight. The door was still open, leading into the kitchen, and this was his last and only chance at freedom. How long could he last in this wretched condition, he could not say, and doubted very much that he would survive for very long. Still, he'd be damned if he was to perish in this shithole basement, on their terms. If he were to die, at least he'd die a free man trying to escape.
He hurried through the kitchen, not bothering to stop to take in his surroundings or to take note of what the rest of the house was like, but instead bolted through the glass slider doors, and slammed them shut on his way out, neither stopping or slowing his run.
Within the back yard, by the right-hand corner of the chain-link fence lay a dog on a leash, his glassy eyes gazing blankly ahead at the empty metal water bowl that gleamed brightly in the morning sun. It looked to be either a golden or Labrador retriever, but it was impossible to tell, for most of the dog's fur had been gone, and like the tenants in the house (and like Derrick himself), this dog was decomposing, laying amid its filth while flies swarmed and maggots burrowed deep in its collapsed, decomposing flesh and muscle. It had no eyelids and no lips either, and so its mouth was frozen in a leering grimace as its tattered tongue poked through the gaps of its teeth.
Derrick's heart sank the moment he lay eyes on the dog. It was bad enough what they had done to him, without his consent, unconcerned with whether or not he approved of the condition they left him in, but to do the same to an innocent dog, incapable of consenting to such a horrid condition was reprehensible. The arrogance that they possessed, that someone from the outside might not only approve, but welcome such a mutation that they had foisted upon him had now reached new heights.
Derrick wondered if the dog was truly capable of grasping the extent of his master's violation, of the unnatural abomination they had transformed him into. The dog seemed not to be in any physical discomfort, but at the same time seemed despondent, dispirited; ergo, Derrick concluded that perhaps he did sense that something sinister was amiss, unable to truly fathom how great of an abomination he now was, yet still sensing somehow that he no longer belonged in the natural order, that nature should indeed abhor what he had become.
The dog whined as he heard Derrick's approach.
"Relax, I'm not going to hurt you," Derrick reassured the poor beast as he hunkered by the lying dog and stroked his flank tenderly.
In the past, he, like most other people, would have been sickened by the thought of touching such a mutt, not just filthy from the outdoors, but corrupted from within, and covered in flies, maggots, and pestilence of that which must be dead and decomposing. Yet Derrick now saw in this poor creature a kindred spirit, someone who had been violated in much the same way Derrick had been, someone who suffered the same, who could relate to him where others would most likely recoil in fear and disgust.
The dog scratched his flank with his right hind leg, clawing off some of its flesh, which hung in tatters from his toenails, leaving even more of the blackening muscle beneath exposed.
The dog whimpered and whined as he gently nuzzled what remained of his nose against Derrick's lap.
"What they did to us was unspeakable," Derrick sighed dismally.
He wrapped his arm around the dog's neck, squeezing tightly, and shuddered at the sound of the poor beast's snapping neck, and was then filled with blessed relief when the dog stopped moving, completely dead as it now should have been to begin with.
The punishing sun and oppressive humidity should have slowed him as it had deterred most other people from leaving their homes without the blessed relief of their car's air conditioning, as it would have for him as well when he was alive. It was a sweltering day, as everyday had been this summer, yet Derrick Sinclair was no longer bothered by such extremes in weather. His rotting body never secreted a drop of sweat from his decaying pores. He ran down these suburban streets that morning, never winded, never breathing heavily, but with the bleak determination to get far away from that house, from that unholy covenant, to die with dignity in his own home, in the comfort and relative safety of familiar settings and faces.
Up ahead by the street corner, he could see a group of six boys all around the ages of twelve and thirteen, passing around a joint, and could dimly smell the reek of marijuana on each of them; he felt somewhat relieved that his senses still worked on some level. His sight and hearing had worked just as well as it had before; olfactory senses had dulled, but apparently were still present as well. He was sure that these kids could smell him as well, the fetid stench of his putrescence as he quickly walked past them. Some of the still sober kids flinched back, while the more intoxicated merely stared blankly with bloodshot eyes as their mouths hung open, and each one gagged and cringed in revulsion as he neared them.
"Goddamn, what the fuck happened to you?" one of them exclaimed as he waved his hand in his face, coughing before pinching his nose shut.
Derrick grinned. "I was dumb enough to use drugs, and now look at me."
"You're fulla shit," another boy scoffed, giggling as he took another puff of the joint and exhaled it in Derrick's face. "Weed don't do nothin' like that. Fuck you!"
"Get the fuck outta here, dipshit, you fuckin' reek!" another one cried.
Another one spat on Derrick's already torn and soiled shirt and they all laughed.
Unmindful of the saliva, Derrick walked away, hearing their shouts of anger and curses:
"Yeah, that's right, chickenshit fag, just walk away!"
Derrick's foot caught in a pothole and his head thrust as his body was thrown forward. He threw his arms out to break a potential fall as his feet carried him forward, staggering quickly before he was able to regain his footing. The children laughed. Their mocking derisive laughter became softer the farther Derrick hurried away from the punkass brats, yet still echoing, still lingering even from a distance.
Derrick supposed he couldn't blame them too much, for what could one expect from those still so young, particularly in such a shithole of a town as Tibernicus. At their age, Derrick had a rebellious streak as well, he supposed, and had even experimented with drugs a few times as well. Though he hadn't been that disrespectful as far as he could remember.
Of course, Tibernicus had been a much different place back then.
At least he hadn't tripped and fallen. Had he done that, they probably would have spat on him some more before lowering their pants and urinating and defecating on his crumpled body as he tried to get up. Such balls when they're in a large group like that, he thought, rolling his eyes as he wiped the thick wad of saliva from his shirt, relieved to be free from that indignity at least; if not the putrid juices his body now secreted that deeply stained and tore the fabric.
Derrick sighed dismally.
Tibernicus used to be such a nice, friendly, peaceful community. When he grew up, one could walk the streets without any problems, because there hadn't been any major crime. Those who used drugs at least had the sense not to get high out in the open like those stupid kids back there. And people were friendly, always willing to help one another in such a closely knit community. It was a fine place to raise a family, perhaps not entirely free from the negative influences your children might encounter, but free from such high levels of gang violence and drug activities that ran in abundance now in this once peaceful suburban area.
Within the last ten or so years, however, Tibernicus had sunken deeper and deeper into a cesspool of filth and depravity. Tibernicus had once been an upper-middle class area, yet overtime as gang activity became more rampant and violence and crime became more common, property values plummeted. In time, most of the residents who had lived here before the town's downfall had moved away as soon as humanly possible.
The houses on each suburban block were once well-maintained, yet now stood as decaying slabs of wood with faded, chipping paint, cracking vinyl siding that seemed to be pealing off, or grimy brick and mortar, cracking and chipping away at the seams. The yards, once prosperous with lush lawns and shrubbery were now mostly barren dirt pits, some with a few patches of crab grass poking through the dried, cracked earth, struggling to cling to their final thinning threads of life. Those few who tried to maintain their property seemed to be hit the hardest by random acts of vandalism that occurred all too frequently. Because of the frequent vandalism, those who owned cars usually found that by the time it was all said and done, the fees to get their cars repaired eventually accumulated into a sum that was twice what they had paid for the vehicle in the first place.
The sun scorched Derrick's eyes as he looked upward, yet as bright as it was, and as hot as had been, walking by day was still relatively safe, whereas had he been traveling by nightfall, it would have surely been suicidal. A woman walking at night was sure to be raped, perhaps brutally so, while either gender was in danger of being mugged, possibly killed in the process.
Carjacking was all too common as well, and while Derrick couldn't quite remember how he had been captured by that small unholy covenant in the first place, he imagined himself at first thinking and fearing that they had been carjacking him while the capture was taking place. Derrick thought he had known all the risks of living in Tibernicus, but nothing could have prepared him for this, for what those monsters had done to him! To be carjacked or mugged was to be expected. But for a small cult to reanimate you into an undead abomination was still unthinkable even in a town that was on an inevitable slide into total anarchy.
Up ahead, an elderly black woman, sitting and smoking a cigarette on her porch, cried out in terror upon first glance of Derrick. "Get away from me," she hollered as the cigarette slipped from her fingers as she sprung to her feet, throwing her hands up in a warding off gesture as her entire body trembled.
"Calm down, lady, I'm not gonna hurt you," Derrick said, feeling uneasy, as he continued to walk, never approaching the terrified woman.
"Awww, Lawd," she whimpered, her mouth hanging open, as she threw herself into her home and slammed the door shut.
Derrick imagined that she might be frantically calling the cops behind her door, clutching the phone tightly into her hand as she pressed it firmly against her ear, still trembling, her words stammering, barely coming through her hoarse sobs of fear. Derrick moved faster. Aside from finding out that the Unholy Trinity had been following him (he could almost feel their vile presence bearing upon him, but could see no outward sign of the vermin) the last thing he needed was to deal with the police, or to draw any undue attention toward himself, as impossible as that seemed given how badly he looked and smelled.
A black man in his early twenties with a shaved head and a two-day stubble over his face slowed his bicycle to keep pace with Derrick's stride. The man was dressed in black denim jeans and a gray muscle shirt was drenched in perspiration while beads of sweat dripped from every contour of his face. He was winded, panting as his eyes glared at Derrick with curious revulsion. "Goddamn, motherfucker, what the fuck happened to you?" he exclaimed with a cringe. He took a deep breath, then gagged and cough, now giving Derrick wide berth as his eyes began to water. "You look and smell like shit!"
I know, Derrick thought but did not say, trying to ignore the man.
"Jesus Christ, man, what the fuck happened to you?"
"I'm dead, now fuck off," Derrick muttered bitterly.
The bicyclist pedaled faster now, eventually disappearing into the horizon up ahead, and Derrick was relieved to see the bastard go.
At least the terrified geezer back there had enough sense to fuck off and leave me alone, Derrick thought, embittered. He sighed, and wondered what more could happen on his journey home.
At least the dogs had enough sense to steer clear of the abomination he had become, much to his relief. One German shepherd growled as he passed. The canine sniffed and flinched back, quickly hurrying away from the walking corpse before settling down and defecating behind a trashed car parked in a driveway.
A crow squawked from close behind him, before digging its talons into Derrick's scalp and plunging its beak deep into his left temple. The crow squawked again as Derrick cried out, not feeling a trace of pain from the crow's mutilation, but still feeling the rage boiling on some level, laced with a hint of fear as he threw his hands to his head and closed them around the crow's body, squeezing tightly. The crow squawked a third time, this time from sudden panic as Derrick closed both of his hands around the bird's torso, crushing the wretched bird, hearing its bones crack as warm blood gushed through his fingers. The bird squirmed once and stopped moving. It was a warm, crumpled, sticky mass of torn flesh and shattered bones that clung to Derrick's fingers and palms while the head dangled limply. He shook the remains free from his hands as best he could, though a few feathers still clung to his palms. He wiped them on his pants and pressed on, wondering what more could possibly happen.
A few more crows hovered in the sky, their black wings flapping in the blinding white light of the sun. A few drops of birdshit splashed against the vertex of Derrick's head; one indignity after another, he thought with a sigh. But otherwise, the remaining crows kept their distance. None seemed to have the audacity of that first crow, and so instead they followed him discreetly, perhaps waiting for him to finally keel over, to die for real and thus become easier, safer prey.
Almost home, he thought with a small shred of triumph as he gazed upon the stop sign ahead with DON'T spray-painted in white above the word STOP. Just another block and he would be home finally, away from the Unholy Trinity's grasp and away from the assholes of Tibernicus as well. Who knows? Maybe if I shower, I'll wash this rotten flesh off me, and healthy skin will blossom again and I'll be just as I was before, he speculated wistfully, though didn't really believe that it would be so easy.
When Derrick arrived at the house he had rented about ten minutes later, he felt a sudden sense of dismay upon the realization that he no longer had his keys in his pockets. Either they had fallen out when he had been captured or perhaps those undead freaks had taken them from him during one of the times when he had been unconscious. Mixed emotions flooded him when he closed his hand around the doorknob and pushed the door open: Relief that he would be able to get into his house after all. But also perturbed at his roommate, Eddie Valance's negligence in overlooking the necessity of having one's door locked at all times, lest someone break into your home, murder you, and/or steal your possessions (though sometimes even locked doors weren't enough to deter some of the more skilled burglars).
"Eddie," he called out as he entered the living room.
The twenty-seven inch flat-screen Emerson TV remained on, as contestants tried to guess the correct price of a new car on The Price is Right, but otherwise the living room remained silent. As Derrick pushed the front door closed, locking the deadbolt, he felt an eerie presence, and wondered once more if perhaps the Unholy Trinity had followed him to his home after all, if perhaps they might be waiting for him, waiting to strike, to finish whatever perverse procedure they had in store for him. Derrick shuddered at the thought, sighing, before he sat down upon the burgundy sofa that looked tacky within the sallow walls of the room, and grabbed the remote, flipping through the channels, unmindful of the fact that the flies were now like a second layer of skin over his body were spreading over the couch as well. At one time the thought of insects, rats, or other vermin sharing a home with him would have been repulsive, yet now he almost got used to their presence in the short time of his decay. The flies incessant droning now blended into the background, barely noticeable.
"Don't move, asshole!" someone called from the kitchen, and Derrick heard hurrying footsteps pounding against the tiles of the kitchen floor, followed by the loud pump of a 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun. He looked up and found himself now staring down the pit of that shotgun, whose muzzle pressed firmly against his chin, digging into his already decayed form. His eyes veered upward, seeing anger laced with fear upon the countenance of Eddie Valance as he held the shotgun up at him, finger poised at the trigger. "You picked the wrong house, you son of a bitch, now get your ass on the ground now!"
Slowly, Derrick rose to his feet, his hands high in the air. "Eddie, it's me, it's Derrick. I know I look different, but you must recognize my voice."
A seed of doubt became apparent in Eddie's taut dark eyes as his arms began to tremble, lowering the shotgun a few inches, before raising it again, not as poised as before, against Derrick's face. Eddie was a large man, standing at six foot, four inches, with a bulky body frame, perhaps slightly overweight, but still able to move gracefully, never clumsy, fumbling, or winded from walking long distances. He was dressed now in torn, faded blue jeans and a dark red flannel shirt, his long dark hair now tied back in a ponytail as his bushy beard dipped just below his chin. There was not a trace of fear in his dark brown eyes, but there was still some doubt as to the prudence of what he had done now. He backed away a few steps, sighing, unsure of where to proceed.
"I swear to God it's me," Derrick insisted.
Eddie lowered his shotgun, biting his lips as his pale features whitened even further. "What the fuck happened, buddy? You've been gone for days."
"I don't know," Derrick said softly, feeling a lump building in his throat. Had he still been capable of crying, he would have surely wept now, but instead uttered what felt like a dry sob as he tried to explain. "I was captured by some weird cult, they did something to me; I don't know what."
A sudden gunshot thundered from close by, and Derrick flinched back, half-sure that Eddie had chosen to shoot him anyway in the heart, and that perhaps he would fall dead, dead for real this time. Instead, it was Eddie who stumbled forward a few times before his knees buckled. The shotgun slipped from his fingers as his face exploded in a spray of blood, bone and tissue that splashed Derrick's face, blinding him for a few seconds before he was able to wipe his roommate's blood from his eyes and gaze haggardly as Eddie fell, lying face down on the ground and more crimson fluid soaked into his dark hair from the entry wound over the vertex of his head. His body twitched a few times and was still, lying, soaking in a pool of blood by Derrick's feet.
Standing by the kitchen doorway was Jennifer Winston, holding the smoking gun, with neither horror nor triumph in her eyes, but instead a cold determination. She looked as Derrick had left her in the basement, save for her flesh, which was now lighter in tone. But although she had apparently been brought back from the dead by the same voodoo that had resurrected Derrick, her decomposition had not yet begun. A couple flies hovered around her face and hair, but there was not a single gangrenous patch anywhere upon her body. "They brought me back after all," she said as she took a few more steps toward Derrick, her revolver now pointed a few feet from his throat.
"What...it can't be," he murmured with bewilderment.
"They killed me as a gift to you," she went on, "but then you killed Sister Annie, snapped her neck so she'd stay dead, and now I'm the Sacred Virgin, Sister Jennifer. I still can't get used to the title, still can't get used to being dead, but not really dead, soon to be rotting away, the way you are now."
Derrick threw out his hands, pleading: "Jennifer, I swear, I didn't do this, I didn't want this. They did it to me, as well; I'm a victim in all of this just like you."
"They violated us both and you violated me."
Derrick shook his head frantically, unable to say anything more.
"When we were kids, and I said no, you respected that. It must've taken all the willpower you could muster to stop that far into the act, but you stopped and I was grateful for it, at least. But then I died, and I couldn't protest, couldn't tell you to stop, and you went ahead without consent, because dead girls can't say no, right?" Her voice grew higher both in pitch and volume as she clenched her free hand into a tight fist, gritting her teeth at him and snarling. "You raped my body, goddamn you, my defenseless body! You raped my soul!"
She squeezed the trigger, her cries of rage competing against the thunderous gunshot that echoed throughout the room. Derrick doubled over as the bullet entered his gut. The pain should have been excruciating, but it wasn't. Pain was still present; he still felt the bullet burrow deep into his organs, still groaned, but it was a dull pain, coming from a distance, almost entirely mental. It was as though he were merely imagining the pain, or remembering old pain, from his past, rather than experiencing it at this very moment. Nevertheless, he fell to his knees by Eddie's corpse, feeling Eddie's blood soaking into his pants, dampening his shins and knees as his hands rested on the cold chrome of the double-barrel shotgun. He looked up at Jennifer Winston, up at the passionate hatred that smoldered in her eyes as she held the gun, pressed firmly against his temple.
"You miserable ingrate," someone else called from the kitchen.
Both Jennifer Winston and Derrick Sinclair jumped, startled by the sudden noise, their eyes immediately jerking toward the direction of the kitchen doorway, where two more men slowly walked through, both rotting as Derrick had been rotting. Neither had been draped in cloaks to disguise their features as they had in the basement, but instead walked, their decomposition clearly and sickeningly exposed for the world to see, at least from the neck up. They were dressed in the garments of a priest about to give sermon during Sunday mass. They even sported crucifixes around their necks as a further mockery to Catholicism. One was taller and bulkier while the other was more slender and of average height.
"The father and the son," Derrick deduced.
Jennifer still held her gun to Derrick's head, but her trigger finger, no longer poised, was trembling, as was the rest of her body. She looked back at The Father and The Son, then toward Derrick once more as she began to breathe heavily.
"I gave you a gift, and this is how you repay me, Derrick," he said, sighing and shaking his head, his countenance not filled with righteous fury, but instead he remained solemn with somber disappointment. "I allow you to embrace your mortality, and in doing so become immortal, and you run away from me and kill my blessed Sacred Virgin, Sister Annie, in such a way that I am powerless to bring her back. You even killed my dog as well."
"You forced it on me!" Derrick yelled, for he was the one filled with righteous fury at the violation that had been foisted upon him. "I never asked for this 'honor' and I don't fucking want it!"
The Father lifted his arms into the air in a gesture of jubilation, his mouth now in a leering grin of joy as he spoke with the exhilarating passion of one with utter conviction of his beliefs, almost as though he were on the verge of weeping with great elation. "I have given you the gift of immortality, allowed you to participate in what the future will bring for all humanity in time, cast away from the shackles of life, from the vulnerabilities and frailties of the living, and filled you with the vitality of the undead."
Derrick opened his mouth but was unable to speak.
It had instead been Jennifer Winston's turn to rebuke the Father's sermon as the rage filled and darkened her eyes and she gritted her teeth. "You killed us both and brought us back as these undead freaks!" she cried, her voice growing louder and shriller with each syllable. "You robbed us of our humanity and thrust us into a life we never asked for and we don't want, and you say it is a gift?"
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she bowed her head, her face contorting with anguish as she looked shamefully at Eddie's body, still lying crumbled and face-down on the floor as she first lowered her gun, then raised it again, this time in The Father's direction. "I killed him," she murmured softly as her eyes gazed down the barrel of her revolver in disbelief, her mouth hanging open as her entire body now seemed wracked with sharp convulsion. "I did this. I took a life. Innocent life." She let out a sob, breathing heavily, and as impossible as it seemed, her countenance now seemed to Derrick's eyes to be even more pallid than before. Her eyes veered toward the Father as she once more aimed her gun at his head. "You made me do it, you made me kill!" she screamed, and her cries surpassed the volume of the gunshots as she pulled the trigger three times.
The Father reeled back from the impact of the rounds as they each slammed against his face and forehead. No blood splashed as the bullets burst from the back of his head, only dried skull fragments, as well as moist gray matter, which caked the wall behind him as his arms and legs flailed, and his back slammed against the wall behind him. He quickly slid down into a sitting position, smearing his brains even further into the wall as he did so, until his body laid still, his head—or what was left of it—lolling about his shoulders.
Derrick's fingers caressed the barrel of Eddie's double-barrel shotgun and quickly closed around the sticky metal surface just as The Son recoiled from the suddenness of The Father's death, before charging blindly at both Jennifer and Derrick. The shotgun was heavy and Derrick nearly dropped it twice as he lifted it into the air, a feat harder still, for the bullet wound in his stomach, while not leaving him in agony as it should have, had weakened him, though not as much as it might have when he were alive. Nevertheless, the sudden action of lifted the shotgun into the air and almost jumping to his feet had torn the wound even wider than before, and his intestines spilled through, slithering down his legs, coiling around his ankles as they slapped wetly against the floor. He grunted and screamed, more from shock than from pain, and took a staggering step forward.
Derrick's entire body shook painfully from the force of the recoil as the butt of the shotgun slammed hard against his flank and armpit and he was almost taken off his feet. The gunshot was deafening and for a second even drowned out the Jennifer's anguished cries. As The Son was about to lunch forward, the buckshot took him off his feet as the fragments bombarded and annihilated his face and neck. His body was thrown back, arms and legs flailing in the air as he hit the wall behind him. As with The Father, The Son shed not a drop of blood, but his skull and brains still caked the wall behind him as he now lay crumpled on the floor.
As smoke continued to trail from the twin barrels of the shotgun, the weapon nearly slipped from Derrick's fingers as he immediately collapsed to his knees, his body shaking uncontrollably with muscle spasms.
Even with the Unholy Trinity now completely exterminated, the look of utter horror and anguish never left Jennifer's face. "I'm still gonna rot away, even now, just like you, aren't I?"
For a few seconds as Derrick slowly rose to his feet, still gripping the shotgun loosely to his bosom, his and Jennifer's eyes met with an awkward silence. Finally, Derrick shook his head as he stumbled forward before regaining his footing, and said: "I don't know." He sighed, "I don't really know how this works. I'd like to think that with that bastard dead, his curse will be undone, and maybe I'll get better, the process will reverse itself and I'll go back to the way I used to be." He looked down at the pile of intestines, like sausages, piling up to his ankles, and sighed grimly. "I doubt it though. After all the damage my body's taken—fatal damage—I don't think I can ever go back again."
"Maybe his death stopped it cold," she said, trying to find some hope from such a bleak prognosis. "I haven't started rotting away, so maybe with him dead, I won't, and I'll be spared such a terrible fate." But even as she said this, flies swarmed around her body, and one crawled slowly up her nose. Perhaps it had been a coincidence and nothing more, but the flies' presence on her as well as on him was still disenchanting nevertheless. Derrick sighed, thinking that perhaps the damage had already been done, and her fate had been sealed just as his.
"One thing's for sure," Derrick said, almost grinning. "He was wrong about being immortal. We can die just as easily as the living can."
"He was wrong about a lot of things," Jennifer agreed, her face darkening as anger returned once more. "Maybe he had some special powers to do this to himself and others; I can't explain it any other way, but like other religious fanatics, he was too consumed in his twisted vision, with no concept of reality whatsoever."
Derrick sighed and shook his head with contempt. "No shit."
Jennifer gazed one last time at Eddie's corpse and frowned as she squeezed her eyes shut. "But even if he was, it doesn't change the fact that I'm a murderer. I went along with those bastards, at least at first; I went with them to pick you up and bring you back, and I was the one who killed your friend."
"I'm afraid I can't argue with that," Derrick said morosely.
"So where do we go from here?"
"There's really only one thing we can do."
"What—" she began, but was cut off by the loud crack of the shotgun as Derrick pumped another round into the barrel. Jennifer recoiled, throwing her arms out in a warding off gesture as once more her face contorted, not in guilty anguish this time, but in mortal fear.
There was no time for pity or compassion to warm Derrick's now black heart as he quickly squeezed the trigger. As the roar of the gunshot boomed, Jennifer cried out momentarily as sparks of gunpowder flared from the muzzle. Her head whipped back as the force of the impact at pointblank range flung her body a few feet. As she seemed to fly in the air, there was a loud crack as the vertex of her head slammed smartly against the wall behind her, and she now lay sprawled upon the floor, on her back. Chunks of bone and gray matter smeared against the wall above her, dripping like oatmeal to the ground below as it slid in thick runners. The side of her face had now been eaten away, leaving bits of charred, fractured bone exposed. A chunk of shrapnel had pierced her left eye, while the right one gazed blankly ahead, now devoid of emotion but was somehow still hateful gaze that shot a dagger through Derrick's decaying heart.
"I'm sorry," he murmured as he clutched the smoking gun to his bosom and hunkered by the woman's corpse. "But I really had no other choice." Although he loathed such a duty, he felt not an ounce of remorse, because what he had said had been the absolute truth; the deed, while not pleasant, had been a necessary evil. He couldn't take the chance of her false hopes clouding her judgment, couldn't risk her choosing life because of such futile hopes of recovery. Perhaps he couldn't know her fate with any sense of absolute certainty for she hadn't yet begun to decompose, but upon seeing the flies gathering around her fresh corpse, he knew her prognosis was bleak. The Unholy Trinity had made them both into abominations; what they were was an affront to life, and so it was better that he finish the job so they could be dead for real, once and for all.
Indeed Derrick wished he could detonate a nuke within the heart of Tibernicus, annihilating all life within the area and reducing the land to a radioactive cinder. Only then could such horrors truly be buried, never again to be exhumed to the general populace, forgotten by nature and unknown to man. Alas, he realized the futility of such a dream, and would instead settle for the deaths of those directly involved, while allowing witnesses such as those stoned kids and the terrified elderly woman to form their own conclusions, blissfully ignorant of what had truly transpired. While perhaps not enough to allow him death with total ease that the secret would be buried with him, he knew it was the best he could settle for.
As he gazed down upon Jennifer's corpse—her arms and legs still twitching lifelessly—he felt a mild temptation to perform sexual intercourse with her once again, as he had when she had been dead for the first time. Despite her face being battered and mangled beyond repair, there was that slight sense of exhilaration gained from the idea, at least on an emotional and cognizant level, though sexually, he felt nothing. His penis remained flaccid within his pants, forever dead and rotting as was the rest of his body. As he saw more droning flies hovering over her flesh, and as her shattered skull gleamed dimly from the sunlight that broke through the front windows in the living room, he shuddered at the idea, both enchanted and revolted at the same time. No, he would not violate her lifeless corpse a second time. Such desires and intentions seemed futile when one was impotent.
He'd shed not a tear for Jennifer Winston's death, the death of his own sexuality, nor for the murder of his roommate and best friend. He was beyond caring about such matters, which, in the face of his own demise, seemed insignificant. All that mattered now was burying the remnants of this abhorrent conflict once and for all, and there really was only one way to do so.
Once more Derrick noticed the weight of the shotgun held loosely to his chest. He fell to his knees, feeling once more the congealing blood of Eddie Valance soak into his shins as he pumped another round into the chamber of the shotgun. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as the barrels dug deep into his chin and he rested a tremulous index finger against the trigger. There was a slight itch along the corner of his left eye; a phantom tear scrolling down his cheek. His lips parted with a sigh. With only a moment's hesitation, Derrick squeezed the trigger and was thrust swiftly and blissfully into oblivion.
The end
July 29, 2005
August 30, 2005