Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER
Eleven
When she opened her eyes, an overabundance of flesh surrounded Jane, in columns and arches of red. It crafted the ceiling above her, the floor beneath her, the walls pressing against her in viscid swirls. What wasn’t made of meat was pitch darkness that was hot and reeking and endless.
Rhythmic thrumming, almost like that of a heartbeat or a digesting intestine, jerked the fleshy mattress that pillowed her. To her right was a plinth of meat, and beside that was a fleshy stalagmite, giving the appearance of a lamp and chair.
She blanched as she looked around the chamber, noticing more furniture-shaped hunks of meat and bony protrusions that hinted at window sills, a door threshold, a fireplace, and shelves.
A heart. A gut. An organ. Jane was trapped in the vaults of some great organ, one that was some hellish mimicry of the Drowning House. It was hot and damp and smelled foul, like being seated before a hound panting its rank breath into her face. The room—the organ—itself that was breathing.
How did she even end up here?
When she looked down at her leg, blood continued to gush from the wound in torrents that turned her skirt black.
The skin there was ravaged in the jagged pattern of monstrous teeth that consumed nearly the entirety of her calf.
Flaps of flesh hanging onto the wound by mere sinews wavered with the room’s breathing.
The ache she felt was but a distant echo despite her growing lightheadedness as memories of the beast, blood-drenched mud and cellars, and collapsing in the conservatory rushed back to her.
She needed to run—where to, she’d decide on once she gained her bearings.
The flesh beneath her squished and she slipped on the slick viscera when she tried to stand. Blood and fluids splattered each time she fell. A sweet and coppery tang bathed her tongue, invaded her nose.
Paired with the pain in her leg, the organ-room refused to let her find purchase, and it seemed to wheeze out a laugh once she accepted that she was trapped.
She groaned, finding herself too exhausted to even attempt to comprehend how she came to occupy this nightmare-space, and halfheartedly gripped the pin-knife in her hand when she recalled she still held it.
Her fist fell from her lap to be cradled by the flesh-floor and her nose wrinkled beneath the sudden smell of burning meat.
She wondered if the beast was here too. And if it was still hunting her.
The thought made her breath snag as she paused to listen for anything.
The slip of claws against organ-meat, the panting of angry breaths, the roars of a creature hellbent on vengeance.
But there was nothing. At least not at first.
The first thing she heard was her name.
“Jane…” it was a sound that gurgled, the syllables bubbling from the back of a blocked throat.
She gasped and pressed herself deeper into the flesh-wall; her body was jerked by another undulating pulse.
If this chamber was meant to resemble the conservatory, then the walls tapered down into its doorway where the muted glow of two eyes peeked around a black corner. Then, crawling on its hands and knees, emerged what Jane could only describe as a demon.
She choked on a cry as the thing skittered toward her, closer and closer.
It had claws that glinted with the same golden sheen as the many too-tight rings upon its crooked fingers and dug deep to grasp fistfuls of fleshy floor.
Its wet breathing rattled between ribs that writhed within a smoldered chest.
Jane couldn’t move, whether because of fear or pain or the inability to find a secure hold on the fleshy surface she was curled upon, she did not know.
As desperately as she wanted to flee or hide, she failed to summon such strength into her limbs.
She was held prisoner by terror. She shook, hair slick and plastered to her brows with sweat and blood.
The demon’s body was covered with red, flayed muscle that bubbled with burns, boils, and decaying bits that hung on thin threads of flesh.
Golden rings pierced its nipples and a rigid phallus, and from the piercings wept blood and gold.
A fine, thick, burgundy-colored veil embroidered with golden tassels was draped over a head that was misshapen.
Elongated in the shape of a muzzle, with the muted glimmer of sickly yellow eyes peering at her through the fabric.
A chill entered Jane’s blood and a sizzling energy struck her bones.
It resembled the idol in the parlor room.
“Jaaaaaane…” The demon gurgled again, its voice androgynous but dreadful in its croaking intonation, and Jane wished for it to never utter her name, let alone speak, ever again.
Such a wish was denied as it groaned, quick and harsh, “Jane!”
Its breath filtered through its veil to disturb her hair; it reeked of carrion and sulfur.
Even when she tried to hold her breath, the sweetly bitter stench pried its way into her mouth, her nostrils, her very bloodstream.
A hand, red and raw, shimmering with a layer of pus as though freshly burned, raised slowly, and Jane held a breath as she prepared for it to grab her.
And she almost wished it had as it instead grasped the tasseled edge of its veil and pulled it back, taking with it pearly strings of raw fluids and strips of burnt infection.
Something nearly canine screamed at her, its flesh flayed off to reveal a living infestation of a face.
Golden teeth ground against one another as gilded puss oozed from between them.
More pus leaked from the slits of nostrils that ran the entire length of its snout to the ridged dome of its cranium, the sockets that loosely held bulging, asymmetrical eyes, and the piercings decorating bony arches of its cheeks and brows.
A tongue, long and serpentine, unfurled from its jaws as it gurgled out another, “Jaaaaaaane!” Gold bubbled in foam at the corners of its maw, from which dripped viscous saliva.
Slowly, the tongue inched toward Jane. Its movements were languid and winding, like those of a serpent—the very one that tempted Eve.
She at last found the nerve to scream.
With whatever strength remained in her limbs, she gave a yell and slashed the knife outward. As hot liquid spurted on her hand, the creature retracted with a piercing shriek.
When she opened her eyes, golden fluid stained her arm and a wriggling nub of tongue sizzled between her feet. The stank of singed meat surrounded her as the floor in which her pin-knife touched, too, began to steam, smoldering like flame kissed by ice.
The demon screamed as it reared up on its knees, thrashing its head and sending gold to spatter across the meaty room.
“JAAAAAANE!” The demon’s howls shook the organ-room as it clawed at its face, opening more wounds that cried gold. “Jane, Jane, JANE—”