Thy Wretched Mask

What was the point?

I have now tasted every inch of Ghalena’s body. I know how the fat of her breasts differs from gamey muscle of her arms. I’ve cleaned away every scar and blemish.

Was this supposed to feel good?

I’ve gnawed on her bones, sucked at her cartilage. My tongue has grown sluggish and my jaw sore. The hunger that animated me at first has been sated. But it’s always there. I can keep going. I have to keep going.

Wasn’t I supposed to be letting loose? Giving in to my baser nature? Wasn’t this supposed to make me feel free?

The screams never stoppped. I don’t think Ghalena can ever fall unconscious in a place like this. She screams. It aggravates her lungs, and she coughes up blood and spores. It hurts and she whispers more as her lunges struggle to inflate.

I can tell by the waver of her eyes that her vision is going dark, suffocating, but her body clings to life. The fungus sinks its claws deeper in her, healing the damage she’s doing trying to escape it. It won’t let her die. I won’t let her die.

Wasn’t I doing this for her?

I found a third way. I don’t have to kill her. She’d do anything to live, wouldn’t she?

I’m doing this for her. I’m trying to save her. Doing something right for once. But what was the point? She’s crying, begging me to stop. In the beginning, she would ask me if I’ve had my fill, if I would finally stop. She thanked me! If I’d let her live, she respect that I had the will to avoid killing her while indulging my hunger.

Then, I think, she finally figured out what I was really doing. Why I was being so meticulous. Why I was letting her live. Then her eyes narrowed in utter hatred. It faltered to despair and she wailed, betrayed by a stranger who had done nothing but hurt her over and over.

I finish degloving her arm. I stick my own hand in my mouth, slick with blood and the mushed up flesh and stomach acid. I reach further. I turn away and throw up all of the flesh I’d just eaten.

A stomach can only fit so much mass inside it, after all.

Some of the spores have settled on the growing pile of puke. I think they’re trying to grow there. Good luck, children.

I crawl back toward Ghalena and grab her other hand. She barely has the will to flinch, anymore.

Her voice is hoarse when she speaks. It startles me to her it. It had been quiet for an hour, if the ambiance of flesh and agony could amount to quietitude. I got used to it, at any rate.

“Who… who are you ever saving?”

“You. Proud, delicious Ghalena.”

“So delicious you gorge yourself sick?”

I laugh. I don’t know if I’m crying‍ ‍—‍ if I can cry. But sometimes, in between stomachfuls of Ghalena, I tear at my own face until the red tears fall. I scratch tracks for them to flow down as I laugh.

I was giving into my base nature, letting the urges win. Except I couldn’t lose myself in the frenzy, not like I had earlier. Even as I cannibalized Ghalena, I was exercising even more self‍-​control to keep myself from consuming more of her.

For so long, I had longed to consume human flesh. And when I finally let myself do it…

“I hate it.”

I didn’t expect to say it out loud.

“So stop. You aren’t doing me a favor. Who are you saving? Do you think I’ll still be me when the fungus infects my spirit? Do you think I could possible stay sane while you eat me alive you godsforsaken monster!” She’s screaming the words by the end. Didn’t think she still had it in her.

I bite her hand and tear away a strip of flesh.

Those screams are more pleasant. It almost feels like praise.

I chew and I swalllow.

I bite her hand and I accidentally puke on it. I try, and I can’t bring myself to bite down again. I settle for tearing at it with my fingers. Another strip. I lift it to my mouth. I just feel sick.

Ghalena laughs. Giggling, cackling, volume fluctuating. “I’m being eaten alive, and you’re going to break before I do, aren’t you?”

I can’t keep doing this. What was the point?

But… what was the point of eating her, if I can’t keep it all down?

Isn’t it enough to remove her skin?

Isn’t that what my instincts have been screaming at me to do all this time? I didn’t want to eat people. Well, I didn’t want to just eat people. I wanted to dress myself in their flesh.

She’s still laughing. Laughing at me. “I don’t know what’s more pathetic. That you’re too much of a fuckup to be a monster right, or that you’ll be the death of me anyway.”

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“Yeah, you can’t even manage that much. You’re taking the easy way through. Like a coward. You could have spared me. Or you could have just killed me. But that would have taken a spine, so you do this half and half shit.”

“Coward?” I stand up. I grip her flesh my the wounds and wrench, pull out large chunks, uncaring of how much blood it spills, about how she nearly faints. I don’t think Ghalena can ever fall unconscious in a place like this.

I stuff the bloody chunks in her mouth and she chokes on it. She tries to spit it out, tries to close her mouth. But I grab her by the jaw and force it open. Her jaw makes a sound.

She’s still trying to spit it out, so I lean in and kiss her, using my tongue to force it down, pressing my face against hers. My fingers still hold her jaw, so I shift my grip, slipping my hand deeper in to join my tongue in force her own flesh down her throat.

She bites my tongue. I don’t flinch from the pain. Even in my rage, I know I deserve it. But I pull back, shredding my tongue since she doesn’t let up. My fingers prevent her from biting it clean off.

“How does it feel? Does it feel easy? Does it feel cowardly? How much human flesh do you think you could stomach, huh? What if you loved it? What if it took every ounce of will you have not to tear you limb from limb and maim you beyond what even the fungus could heal? Do you even understand what I’m doing for you?”

“You… you’re always going to think this is heroic, aren’t you? I could hate you for the rest of my life, and you’d still think I owed you everything. I… I can’t escape. I can never escape.”

Her words are barely a whisper. She speaks them as last words of revelation and resignation. She’s given up now, well and truly.

But it’s not until I fall back to my hands and knees and bite into the bite of her shoulder that I feel her well and truly break.

The emotional horror of the rest of her is one thing. But knowing the torture will continue at once? That I still have the rest of her torso, her legs, her back… that I’ll pull out her internal organs if I need to go that far?

It’s not a wail of despair. It’s just a sigh of all the breath in her infected lungs, deep and rattling, filling the air with my spores.

Who was I saving? What was the point, if all that came out of this nightmare was an insane, traumatized wreck?

I open my mouth, leaving her shoulder along. I crawl up, curling around her, hugging her with one arm. I kiss her cheek, and the hand of my other arm caresses her other cheek, a cold, bloody touch.

I squeeze her tight. I could provide her some comfort in between the horror, if it would help her hold on.

“Beca.”

“Yes, delicious?”

She grimaces at the term of endearment.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you so profoundly.”

“You can kill me, if you want. When you’re whole again… I don’t think I deserve to live.”

“Haha, and then I go and carry your legacy into the world? Fuck you. You don’t get to die. I… I want you to suffer, Beca.”

“Do you want to eat me back?”

“Ha. Ha. Do you think I’m a monster? No. I… I give up. I’ll give in to the progenitor fungus or whatever the fuck this was all about. I’ll die and let my mind be rewritten however you see fit. You think you’re a monster? You don’t understand a thing. But… I hope maybe you will, when you have to live every day with a reminder of what you’ve done.”

“What if… what if I don’t mind? If I liked it?”

“You didn’t. You threw up three times. But. I swear. I swear upon the iron at the heart of the world. You will never do this to another soul so long as you draw breath.”

Ghalena relaxes. I can feel the hum of the fungus shift as it’s clear she welcomes the roots to spread throughout her body.

“Is it alright…” I start. “If we stay like this? For a little bit? I’m tired.”

“Are you… hungry?”

“No. Never… never again.”

“You’re never gonna eat again?”

“I don’t know if I can stomach it. But I guess I’ll have to. Wait. Are… joking?”

“I feel… there’s a peace, now. That I’m no longer fighting it. I feel safe. The answer is yes, Beca. You can hold me. Being close to you. It feels nice. It shouldn’t. But I… I can’t. I need nice right now. Do you… can I forget it? Will this just be a nightmare, when we leave this place?”

“It was real. What I did to you… you shouldn’t forget it.”

“I don’t want to hate you anymore, Beca. I just want an ally. Someone on my side, finally. I’m tired of being alone against the world.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I am too.”

I hold the body that used to be Ghalena. Her breathing gets deeper, and her lungs don’t rattle and cough anymore. She leans into my touch, and I feel an arm around my back, pulling me in close. I’m her ally.

Ghalena hates me. She died hating me. I don’t know who this is. I don’t know if she’ll remember her hatred.

But that’s okay. Her hatred for Beca lives on in me.