The Acolyte
Copyright 2007 by Mary Harris [aka redplanetes]
Chapter 15
Mena peeled off another strip of duct tape. She stood before the stainless-steel worktable, staring at the dwindling pile of corpses beside it.
There were so many.
The monster worked across from her, expert at butchering. It simply flayed each one, severed tendons, pulled whole muscles loose. Another chunk of bloody meat was plopped down in front of her, and she pulled a fresh black plastic garbage bag from the box, cut it in sections to wrap the meat in. Mena took the slabs, wrapped them tightly, taping them up to make neat little packages. She shook her head, wondered how they would ever get it all into Aunt Helen's freezer.
A squishy, smacking sound broke her thoughts. The creature had found another among the bodies that was tasty; every so often an organ or a limb, or sometimes the entire carcass was stuffed enthusiastically into its jaws, one bite at a time. So far, though, it had not chosen a suitable replacement for its destroyed nose. Mena had an uneasy suspicion it had already found one.
* * * * *
When she had brought the teenaged boy in, the monster showed a delighted interest. Stalking up to the boy, who recoiled seeing the menacing form more clearly, it had begun to sniff agressively at the kid's face, grabbing at the struggling, wailing boy's arms to hold him still.
Mena acted quickly, shouting, "Hey! Hands off, he's mine. I found him, and I'll keep him." She pulled the now-hysterical boy away, pushed him into the office and shut the door behind her. The monster appeared at the window for a few moments, staring in hungrily at the sobbing boy. Mena slapped her palm against the glass, glared at the monster. It blinked, looking slowly back and forth between her and the boy, but soon left to bring more carcasses inside.
Mena sat the kid down on a pile of sleeping bags. "What's your name?" she asked.
He took hitching breaths, moaned, "He's a bad man! ...a bad man."
She sighed, rolled her eyes impatiently. This guy might even be older than her, but it was like talking to a potato.
"What's your name, kid?"
"D-Duh-Danny." He was calming down, and wiped the back of his hand across his nose.
"Danny, stay here for a while, ok?" He nodded, effortlessly trusting her to look after him. "Here's some snacks if you get hungry. I'll come back later..." She started to leave, had the door half-open.
"What's your name?" he called after her.
She smiled darkly. "My name's Mena."
* * * * *
Now, a couple of hours later, they were finally finishing up with the monumental butchering job. Mena sighed heavily, wiped her forehead with a sticky hand. "Awww, great..." she grumbled, realizing how smeared she was. She wiped herself clean as best she could with a damp rag, decided it was time for a break. All that meat would have to go to Aunt Hel's house; it was already half-loaded into her new truck, but she could stop for a rest first.
Danny was asleep on the lumpy pile, stretched out with his mouth open. As soon as she shut the door behind her, he awoke. "Hi, Mena!" he said sleepily. "I saved you some..." Danny held out a smeary half of a chocolate bar.
Mena chuckled. "I already ate, thanks," sucking the remains of some raw flesh from between her teeth. She leaned back against the door, and studied the boy for a moment, curious. He hadn't even asked to go home yet. Odd, unless home life was less than desirable. "Tell me, Danny. Where do you live?"
He looked stricken. "Can't I stay here with you? I like you."
I was right. Whoever looks after him probably won't even miss him. "I'll think about it," she said.
"You're pretty and nice." Danny was gazing at her breasts, entranced. "I like your tits."
Mena choked, trying not to laugh aloud. She certainly hadn't been expecting this. "You like tits, huh?"
He continued staring unabashedly, nodded. "They're what girls have, that I'm not allowed to touch. But I can look, if Ronette's not watching." He swallowed, glanced up at her briefly.
She noticed that he was sweating a bit. The guy was kind of cute, even if he was dumb as dirt. She peeled her shirt off, displayed her curvy chest proudly for the boy. He fidgeted, started breathing hard. Poor horny kid, he probably never gets any. "You wanna touch mine?" Mena fingered the lacy edge of her bra.
Danny nearly fell over his own feet jumping up. He reached a shaking hand out, fumbled it over her round flesh, gasping at the feel of soft, forbidden skin. Squeezing and pawing at her breasts, he treated them like a new toy which might be taken away at any moment. The inept groping wasn't doing much for Mena, though. Bored, she looked down to see an impressive bulge growing in the kid's jeans.
A wicked gleam caught in Mena's hooded eyes. I knew there was a good reason I brought this guy along, she thought as she licked her lower lip. Kneeling, she pushed his greasy apron aside with the back of her hand, and hooked her finger in his waistband. He let out a surprised bark when she undid his jeans, pulled them down along with the boxers underneath. A turgid rod of flesh bounced free, waving at her face.
Mena brushed her fingers up along the valley where legs joined body, through the sparse nest of silky brown pubes. She leaned her face in, let the firm flesh caress her cheek as she inhaled the scent of excited young man - musky-sweet, earthy, slightly acrid. A dew of sweat was forming on the soft skin above his groin, and she kissed the moist flesh, pressing her lips to it. His pecker jumped, nudging her under the chin, leaving its own tiny string of precum.
The rosy head glistened, jumped when she brushed her lips across it. Danny moaned, stroked her hair, his breath hitching when she fondled his balls, the curve of his ass. She took the silky-hard tip of his cock between her lips, scraped her teeth gently over its stretched, sensitive skin.
The boy gasped, jerked forward. Swollen flesh filled her mouth, and she stroked her tongue across it in the tight space, savored the meaty taste and feel before pulling back, letting the cock pop out of her mouth. Danny curled his fingers into her hair, tangling them a little, a moaned plea to continue. Mena looked up at him; his eyes were dark with astonishment and his mouth slack.
"Do you like this, Danny?" she crooned.
He nodded rapidly, breathing heavily. She extended her tongue again, slid it up the underside of his shaft. As she took the head back in her mouth, she could feel it swelling, hardening, and she swirled her tongue around it, sucking gently. It jerked and twitched in her mouth; Mena grasped the base firmly, squeezed the rigid flesh. A pulse stiffened it, then again. She loved the pleasure she could feel on her tongue, that she could inflict.
Trembling groans wracked the boy's body, but they were becoming softer, interlaced with surprised gasps. He started bucking his hips, nearly shaking Mena loose. Pushing against him, she backed the boy up to the wall with the observation window. With his back mashed against the glass, she guided his movements to her whim.
Suddenly a face pressed up to the other side; the monster, eyes feral with hunger. It slapped a spread clawed hand on the glass, slowly slid it down while curling its fingertips; a distant screeeee could be heard behind the thick glass. Mena's heart skipped a beat in momentary terror; she should've known better than to stand in the way of the monster's hideous appetite. She quickened her tonguing, realizing she'd better get this over with soon so she could deal with the hungry wolf at the door. Danny was already there, though.
His cock swelled one last time, and Mena knew his gun was going off. As he breathed a long groan, a tearing, crashing explosion ripped through the door. The monster burst through, homed in on the boy's face instantly. Danny spurt, jerking, onto Mena's tongue; his groan now a muffled scream. His face was half-buried in the creature's jaws, needle-like teeth pulling skin and flesh apart. Convulsive spasms shot the last of his load as his head came apart.
The body fell limp to the floor at Mena's knees, and she kneeled there listening to the crunching, chewing noises. "Sonofabitch..." she muttered shakily, her breathing returning slowly to normal. Finally, she looked up to the the monster smiling at her, smug and pleased, licking its new nose with a long, searching tongue. She had to laugh, though she shook her head in displeasure.
"He was mine! Dammit!" But Mena knew as soon as she said it that the boy had been doomed, from the moment she brought him along. Fun... but food, sooner or later.
The monster only smiled its horrible grin, face as open and unashamed as always, and licked its fingers.
* * * * *
Helen breathed in the moist draft from her open window. The ward was dark, only a spill of light from the hallway illuminated the room. Various lights blinked on machinery beside beds here and there, but otherwise there was no movement. Out of habit and wide-awake boredom, she studied her surroundings for anything different, out of place or interesting.
The same three occupied beds, shadowed grey bulks from which wheezy snores could be heard. An intermittent beep from a monitor, the soundless shifting of a curtain drawn around someone's bed. Helen sighed, it seemed everything was the same, the same dull prison of cleanliness and inertia. She could practically feel herself dying of old age as she lay there, doing nothing, going nowhere.
A shadow on the wall across the room caught her eye. Nearly impossible to make out, a darkness against darkness, but certainly it hadn't been there before, had it? Too high up to be hung artwork, and there was no television there. Maybe it was a trick of the light... She stared at it, curious. A subtle shift of the dark form, then a gleam of reflected light caught on spiny teeth. The shape suddenly resolved into a recognizeable body, crouched and clinging to the wall, watching patiently.
Helen smiled broadly at the unexpected visitor, scooted aside, and propped herself up on one elbow while curling a finger in a 'come hither' gesture. It scrambled down the wall, leapt onto her bed with ease. She winced as the heavy creature's movement shifted her caged leg, but the creature settled against her and began re-aquainting itself with her scent. Its claws clinked against the metal rods holding her leg together.
"It's there to stay, I think." She spoke low as the monster studied the crude brace implanted in her flesh. "Tomorrow I'll try to walk on it, and if it works, I want out of here." The dark face turned towards her, nodded slightly, eyes catching a spark from a streetlamp outside. Staring at her hungrily, the monster continued to sniff its way up her body. Helen couldn't help her arousal, her triumphant joy at seeing the creature in such a bland setting, but she was also uneasy.
"Do you still want me around, " she hesitated, braced herself to be practical, "...ruined like this?"
A wide leer unfurled on the creature's face in answer. It crouched over her, its body just barely touching her. Growling softly, the monster nuzzled at her neck and exposed shoulder, extended a tongue to taste her skin. "Want...," it grumbled, "...need."
Helen supressed the hitch in her breathing, an involuntary response. She was surprised at the heat of her own need, flaring up in desperate revolt after long confinement. Scraping her fingertips across the monster's hide, the dead weight of inertia fell away, and she felt her old familiar ferocity return.
It reached down, twitched aside her hospital gown, pressed its strange body against her. Helen clutched at the creature's rough skin, pulled the monster closer, as though it might slip away again. She grasped its powerful torso, tense, wanting things her body could no longer deliver. Dammit, I never thought I'd have to figure out how to have sex... This is going to be awkward.
She surrendered thought to instinct, and wound her good leg around one of the monster's. In a single heaving motion she flipped them both over, no longer minding the stabs that movement provoked in her healing bones.
Too engrossed in touching and smelling to mind the sudden shift, the creature only unfurled cramped wings out to either side. The broken leg was barely moveable, but Helen paid no heed, and straddled her eager lover, ran her fingers through the long white hairs at its groin. Her searching fingers found the stiffening organ, closed around it. Working in response, the monster's long, rough fingers grasped her hips, wound through her panties and snatched them away with an impatient gesture.
Helen clenched her teeth, knowing this would hurt, but not caring. The creature leaned its wrinkled face up while pulling her down, took some flesh of her shoulder between its teeth. Its body heaved up at the same time as she impaled herself; its jaws shuddered, bit down just enough to break the tender skin. Relentless despite her gasp of pain, the dark creature pushed into her, bucking until it was fully buried.
Sparks swam in her vision and her blood. While her creature had stilled within her, its hungry organ pulsing, it savored the drops of blood forming on the curve of her shoulder, licked them slowly away. The raw ache screaming in her hip slid away to a dull pressure, and she felt her own moisture seeping from around the monster's engorged cock.
She slowly lifted most of the way off, then drove down onto it again."...ahhhn!" A breathy wail slipped from her throat, seemed to excite her dark lover; Helen saw its eyes widen and glisten in the darkness as she turned her head aside. It reached up, grazed spiny teeth against her jawline, breath coming out in huffs as it bucked against her. With each sporadic thrust a surge of mingled pleasure and barbed agony coursed through her; she wanted it to stop, she wanted it to never stop. High-pitched groans began to trail from her parted lips.
Gray swarms gathered around the edges of her vision, numbed her extremities. Helen lost the strength to hold herself up, began sliding aside. The creature fluidly rolled them back over, never ceasing its movements, but slowing while it patted her cheek to revive her.
One sinewy arm rose like a pillar in front of her face. The hand lifted, pushed her head, forced her to look up again, and she saw the monster diving at her face. She craned to meet it; lips, tongues fought to devour the other's. Its teeth scraped along her lip, leaving tiny weeping lines; its clawed hand kneaded through her hair, pricking her scalp.
The creature's hips pounded against her once more, a clenched cry flew from her. Helen twisted her head in the creature's bony grasp, its thumb sinking into her mouth. As soon as she felt it there, she bit down, tightening her jaws in time with the monster's convulsions. It jerked its head back, snarling. Her groans resonated around the tense finger between her teeth.
*
The man woke up reluctantly, something had disturbed his sedated rest enough to jar him fully awake. It sounded like cats fighting or fucking just outside... but not outside, in the room. A cluster of shadowy spasmodic movement on the bed at the end of the room, the one nearest the window. For many seconds he thought the woman there must be in the throes of a seizure, but as he was groping for the nurse-call button, it finally edged through into his awareness that it wasn't just a woman on the bed - there was something on top of her. Some unnatural shape, performing some unnatural act on her, bestial, unhindered by the lack of privacy. The thing was snarling horribly, the sound made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen painfully, made him want to scramble out of his bed and run out of the room.
He couldn't move, never knew one could really be paralyzed by fear. And if he could have moved, what then? Call a nurse? Run away from some nightmarish thing that would easily overtake him, tear him to shreds... or worse? He couldn't even make his voice work, or his lungs, all he could do was stare bug-eyed into the vile contortion of shadows, holding his breath.
*
With each stab into her, a razor-sharp sweetness surged up her body, softening the hammer-blows to her shattered bone, every movement both exquisite and dreadful. Helen clenched her teeth hard, with a satisfying crunch bit cleanly through the first joint of the monster's thumb. A brief moment of slightly bitter and musky taste - then her mouth was full of dry dust, which dissolved to nothing. Her bitten lover seemed hardly to have noticed, continued plunging deeply into her more eagerly, growls becoming whines.
No warning, but a sudden blow of pleasure, as though she had been struck like a temple bell. Helen buried her head in her pillow to muffle the wails. No pain from her hip anymore, the exquisite had washed it clean away. The monster rooted her, quaked with unrestrained hunger. It came with a terrible snarling shudder, jerking into her wildly.
Calming, the beast lay over her, rested its bony head on her shoulder. Helen took great gasping breaths as her muscles twitched around the monster's softening organ. The creature licked her bites, inhaled the breath from her sweat-beaded face. After a time, it focussed again, growled a word to her. "Tomorrow." She beamed a pleasure-loosened smile back, excited and half-fearful. I just hope I can walk...
The creature peeled itself from her; catching sight of its damaged hand, realized its loss. "Yeah, uh, sorry about that," Helen whispered, holding back a snicker. "So is that why you're always biting..." she said, almost to herself.
* * * * *
Charlene Allen reached forward and turned off the windshield wipers. The spatters of rain had finally blown away, leaving only a vague, shifting mist lying low on the ground. The steam parted away from her car as it sped smoothly down the pavement. In her mind, she registered the orderly surrender as evidence, an affirmation of her status. I am in complete control of my life. Anything, anyone that gets in my way, they can expect to be punished.
She was exhausted after her usual double shift, but ran through mental lists of the next day's priorities to stay alert. Board meeting, staff reviews, scheduled surgeries to assist. She looked at her hands, curled firmly around the steering wheel. I could be a surgeon, I have a surgeon's hands. They know where to cut, to remove the contamination, where to guide flesh back together so it knits cleanly. Strong hands. Merciless hands.
Her attention was caught by a pair of headlights in her rearview mirror. Doctor Allen was momentarily peeved; she invariably had the road to herself at this time of night, and liked it that way. After glaring at the yellow beams for a moment, they disappeared. She sighed, satisfied that the interloper had turned off on a side road where they belonged.
That god damn Murdoch woman, tomorrow her little fantasy comes to an end. I can't wait to see the look on her face...
A horrifying shadow sped up behind her car, moments before the heart-stopping horn sounded. She jerked the wheel reflexively, had to struggle against the slick road to regain control. Her heart was racing with liquid ice by the time she got the car to stop fishtailing, but she barely had time to gather up her fury. The horn blared again, immediately followed by a bone-jarring collision; whoever was behind her had rammed her. The car squealed and shimmied, bounced back and forth. Some nutjob with his lights off was trying to run her off the road, and from all appearances he was serious.
Charlene pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, feeling the supercharger kick in. From the sound of the horn, whatever was behind her was very old, and she grasped onto a shred of satisfaction that it couldn't possibly outrun her. Slowly, distance stretched out between her roaring car and the ominous shadow still in pursuit.
She breathed a sigh of relief through pursed lips as the attacker fell away into the darkness. That was close. Fumbling in her purse, she felt around through clutter until the smooth shape of her cell phone emerged. Bastard must pay... The numbers were pressed slowly with trembling fingers; Charlene didn't notice the bulky shadow rocketing towards her.
The force of the collision separated her car from the road, sent it spinning, then rolling across the shallow embankment. Metal crumpled and screamed all around her, tossed her violently with glass that exploded from the windows. In slow motion, she saw the headlights illuminating tall weeds, churned-up earth which leapt wildly.
The car finally lost momentum, and came to rest upside down. Doctor Allen faded in and out of consciousness, wallowed in confusion and vertigo. She hung from her seatbelt, not even feeling her crushed body, only aware that she could breathe. The darkness settled with the sounds of cooling metal.
Footsteps approached, a steady, heavy stride. She could barely turn her head, but saw the dark figure round the front of her smashed car, someone in a long coat, with no flashlight.
"...Help me..." she croaked with all the strength she could force from her lungs. The figure arrived at her door, then stopped. "Help me for fuck's sake..." she demanded again. When only silence answered, she heard the sound. Sniffing. A brief flash of terror that there might be gas leaking - No! God don't let me be blown up! - but the sniffing was more insistent, ...more feral. Like a wolf scenting a wounded deer.
The figure dropped to a crouch, and she saw the face - the dark, wrinkled, malignant face. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, could only watch, bloodless and helpless. The figure leaned in through the broken window, closed a strong hand on her wrist, stretched her arm out to its face. Her hand, the strong surgeon's hand, was closely examined, every finger smelled. As her blood ran cold, she saw lips pull back from a hideous set of teeth, long and sharp.No... oh no no...
Charlene Allen scarcely felt her thumb being bitten off, clean through as though it were a breadstick, but she heard the dull crunch, felt the pull and release from her numb arm. Then, somehow satisfied with that lunatic mutilation, the thing dropped her and strode away. She gasped in shallow breaths, listened to the footsteps receding in the damp weeds. I'll make it after all, I will... I... she thought, groggy, fading, before her head drooped to swing limp and lifeless.
End of Chapter 15
Music for Chapter 15: 'I'm Your Boogie Man' by K.C. and the Sunshine Band
The Acolyte and illustrations Copyright 2007 by Mary Harris [aka redplanetes]
~plagarists will be flayed alive~
redplanet@trinidadusa.net
