Sleep is another kind of rot, Ava thought. Her dreams had changed. Images hung around. Shapes carved into her sight, afterimage of a some blinding glare. Colors bleed from the forms, as hazy as smoke in still air. Maybe blowing out some long sigh of relief—maybe achieving relief, first—would be what banished them, but Ava was suffocating.
Sensation stuck around, too, but she didn’t have an analogy for that. Say it hung or clung, that was almost equivalent, but the important part is that it didn’t feel like that. The sensation was different, overlaying a numb absence of embodiness, the same way the visions played across closed eyes. The visions drew her in, she stared so deeply that of course it’d leave an afterimage, and whatever she felt she eagerly draped over herself.
In her dreams, Ava had felt clean. She felt decent.
Decent, not naked. But what did it mean to be naked? Was a woman swimming in murky waters naked? If she danced in the mist, all her secrets hazy?
If she slips and tumbles through the mud, caked her flesh in streaks of grime, she’s certainly unclean. But the ground is red and thick like clay, then surely she’ll be engulfed more completely than were she wearing a nun’s robes. Would a church find that fungible with modesty?
Wet clay is certainly no garment—what of silk? Is is not the feeling of fabric on her skin that she dreamed of?
But Ava feels nothing save the finest material of all, silk. It swaddles her, a blanket spun tight. Her arms folded tight behind her, and every drive to move them meets the protestations of strained muscles.
The silk presses in on all sides, layer upon binding layer, thickly enough she is warmed fever-hot. She feels slickness on the layer between silk and skin. Sweat, mostly. Here and there something was instead sticky, gluing the shell to her.
Ava was not everywhere covered. She could hardly breathe with how tightly her throat and breast were constricted—but she could breathe. A small hole above her mouth, and weakly she drew inward.
Not the only hole. Elsewhere… No, Ava was not decent.
If a garment covered her only where the bindings did not, she would be more modest.
Focus. Opening her eyes took a minute of deliberate effort, and so much crust pinched at the edges. The fruit of this labor? Dark grayness. An opaque silk veil. There was only one hole over her face.
Whimpering. Why? In her dreams, she was decent. She could see, witness colors so vivid they bled out from the forms. Sleep was another kind of rot; and she could feel the way her thoughts deliquenced like digested meat in the throes of her most intense dreams.
But if sleeping was rotten, what was waking life? Was she awake, or be this some black nightmare?
Whimpering. No, she was wakeful. She felt slick with sweat, she felt the binding constricting her. She felt. No more draping illusions over some numb absence of embodiment.
Deadened nerves grew keen, and the return of sensation came like the crumbling of castle walls. What siege befalls them? What calvary comes?
Whimpering—no, groaning! She drew a breath, a deep one, with daring hope to steal some vitality from the rank, humid air. Her lungs inflated—then sharply comes a pinch, a dull fire below the ribs. The air rebounded the other way, flaring out in this exclamation of pain.
The fire, in turns, squirmed away. And with that, it all came into focus. She had felt one lump twisting in her gut, then suddenly, dozens squirming, wriggling, insinuating.
Ava flinched. Hands twitched impotently. She tried to move a leg, likewise bound. But the command to her limbs begot an echo. The muscle above her wrist flex at her will, but then a spasm, a fluttering, that continued long after. An impulse died abruptly in her thigh; she had never felt an attempted movement fail to reach the limb. At the base of her back, her spine felt longer.
Her attention lingered on the thigh and that impulse that died. There were no words for a limb that simply… and incompletely stopped being yours. Down her legs, the chain of sensation loosened, the flesh emptied of her presenece. Did she still have a leg? Was this a phantom limb?
I have to move. I have to get out of here.
If sleep was rotting… perhaps waking wasn’t necessary the inverse. But if it could be inverted, if what consumed her could be aborted or halted in its advance, certain the only reprieve had to me motion.
Ava stuck out her tongue. She felt strings of silk settle upon it. Gagging, she toward the sensation. Her tongue rose, up and up, and there! The thicker, solid fabric that bound her, hardened by the air and perhaps whatever sticky concoction still clung to her.
Her tongue could do little but act as a guide. She pushed her mouth toward the hard edge of the bindings. As if the kiss it. Her lips found perchances—but they two were no more than guides, a means of aiming. She clamped down to the extent she could, she sucked, but now was the true task.
Her teeth sought outward, jaw straining to facilitate contact. She felt incisors make contact—then it slipped. The silk was squeezed out from between her lips, and almost elastic it pulled away from her.
So close, and now the process needed to be repeated. Breath deep, Ava —no, not that deep, you didn’t want to feel the burning squirming again. Steady now, slower now, painstaking even as the pain staked you.
(Numbness retreating like a castle’s walls crumbling, ever vulnerable to seige—but of course the seige was already over, the enemies were already dancing within the walls, but didn’t it tear you up inside to watch them fall? No, that wasn’t what was tearing you up —but you felt, oh divines you felt it, and how can you focus on licking and kissing and biting silk when your muscles were seizing and your leg wasn’t you and something is gouching a hole in your entrails! Ava, filthy Ava, you naked whore, wouldn’t you rather rot in delirium? Go back to sleep.)
But she was steady, she was slow, she was painstaking even as as the pain staked her. She licked, kissed, and bit the edge of the silk.
She had a single shred of leverage in the world rot-crumbling away around her, but if there was an inverse, it was this!
Licked, kissed, bit, now tear! She chewed on the silk, teeth cutting it open, then lips sucked in the threads, pulling and unraveling the veil around her face.
She saw it happen.
A tear! A seam, a rift in the fabric in front of her eyes! She pulled, and it yawned wider. Like gazing into a slot—but she was gazing into! Beyond the veil!
That the world had been grayness, not black, had given her a hint. Dim light suffused this room—this cell—she was held in. Why? where did it come from? Warm light, yellow—like torchbugs.
Perhaps not a wild leap her mind had gone there. She’d hear of spiders decorating their webs with living bugs, mutilating into service, no more than glowing lures.
Twisting her head around was work. Each movement of her neck spurred motion from a tiny lump. They squirmed against her carotid artery.
Whimpering—no, groaning, grunting in determination. Ava would invert this!
A deep hum reverberated through her.
Ava held her breath. She went still, even though her flesh still fluttered and spasmed.
She lasted seconds, then had to inhale, sucking in air. Then she knew. The air had changed, invaded by a scent so pungent she tasted it. It crept into her nose through the torn veil.
Dense, warm, fuzzy. The acrid stench broke her stillness again, her neck flinchaway away, mouth closing. But there was no escape—not unless she could move. She had torn a slot for her eyes, but did she have the strength to unravel the silk further? Would her body even obey her?
She had to try. But what next?
“I heard you. I’m coming, dear. Be at ease~” The voice telling her to be at ease was a harsh scrape, only akin to a voice that was shrieked through a plegm-clogged through.
Then a shadow cut through the warm light. A face with too many glinting eyes, a panoply of long tendil waving. Two furry lines above, many more below.
And the scent, the musk, only intensified as the thing drew near. The odor radiated. She gagged, tongue lolling.
Something wet touched it! Cool, hairy, and unwelcome. Whatever liquid was drip-deposited tasted sour, but her tongue didn’t move, it only fluttered.
Whimpering. No determined grunting.
“Mm, you’re reacting better to my presence. Getting used to me. Already eager, aren’t you? Ready for feeding?”
Ava pulled her tongue back. “No,” she said. “S-stop it.”
A tendril—antennae—above her pulled back into a spiral. “No feeding yet? Okay, morsel~” Pressure on her torso, through the silk. She had no leverage to pull away. “But what exactly do you want me to stop?”
Everything. Go away. But she—they—were squirming on the inside where the pressure groped her. Burning, so much pain. The walls of her castle were gone.
So when her mouth open, only whimpering came out.
“Oh, morsel…” The pressure didn’t stop, it multiplies, other appendages feeling her up and down—but two were at the sides of her head. The rift she’d torn in the silk vein was widened, and she stared face to face with a five-eyed monster.
The largest of her eyes was a dull blue, a tall, fat slit in the middle of her visage. Beside it two pits were half-closed like curled up flower petals.
“No pupil dilation. Your blood’s all empty, isn’t it? Sweetness all ran dry. You must be hurting so much, dear.” The buzzing came from between the tentacles below her face. Two dark red appendages rubbing together. Her eyes fell lower—those round forms were tipped sharply.
Wetly, too. Did she smell the bitter notes of that venom?
“How long have you been awake, hm?”
Ava didn’t want to make conversation—but how long had she been away? She’d been sleeping, she had no frame of reference. Minutes, definitely. Could it be closer to an hour? “H-how am I supposed to—”
Pinch! Two sharp stings on her neck, through the silk—the bug struck while she was distracted. Her heart beat in the wound, blood welling up. (Not silk, something sticky—how much of that was my blood?)
The stinging metamorphosed into something diffuse and soothing. Like an ice spike melting. With each soft thump of her heart, the venom found its course, and a paresthesia draped over her flesh.
Numbness returned, triumphant. Rebuilding the her castle, her fortification against the pain of wakefulness.
“Too long,” it scrape-crooned. The monster was answering for her: “One moment is too long for a precious thing like you. Look at how you tore up your little cocoon! You must be so confused.”
One of the loci of groping found an opening, and slipped into her bindings — her cocoon. (No, I’m not a worm. This is my prison—so why does that feel like an invasion?)
She felt segmented fingers scratch-caressing her. The monster said, “Give my children some pretty dreams now, morsel.”
“Wait. I just—” She stopped. What could she say to this thing?
“Yes?”
What could she be sure of? It didn’t want her to hurt. It didn’t want her to die. Easing her pain, feeding her—it was mercy of a sort, wasn’t it?
Was there anything she could appeal to?
“You’ll not letting me go, are you?”
A chorus of laughs, too many to have come from those fangs rubbing together. “Of course not! You’re mine~”
“Of course not…” Ava shivered. Her leg, emptied of her presence, was the only part which didn’t partake in the convulsion. Was that a portent? “Still… Could you take me out of this bind—this cocoon? You can put me back!” she hastily added. “If you have to. Just. I’m sweating, it’s all wet and sticky in here. It never cleans off, it’s so filthy with my… everything.”
The face leaned in, looming larger in her vision. The feathered antennae above brushed over her. “Morsel… that’s the point! Hehe, oh I love the way you smell, it’s delicious. Just like how you’re getting used to my scent~”
I’d rather sniff shit! ~~*At least then I wouldn’t be tempted to stuff my face in it.~~
That was one dream she couldn’t invert into reality. But the other… “Can you… can you at least cover me up? I feel so exposed d-down there.”
I shouldn’t have said anything. The groping responding immediating, pressure drifting downward. Off her breast, across her stomach. Midriff, pelvis—
Whimpering. Pathetic whimpering.
That chorus of laughs. “But why would I do that? Then how would my children join you?” That scratch-caress again. That groping past the edge. “Oh, and my next brood is ready. Are you?”
By now that prickling that had begot the gift of numbness was enveloping her body as completely as the silk. It wouldn’t hurt. Whatever it didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt her.
“Will you give me anything?” Is there any point in talking?
“Hehe, yes! I give you what we need. What I want best for you.”
Ava closed her eyes. Breathed out a long sigh. Where was the relief? “Bite me again, please? It still hurts. I’m not ready yet.”
“Of course.” Her bites were always quick—not that Ava could feel the pinch this time. She barely felt the added layer of numbness, the suffusing paresthesia. But she let it in, let the feeling roll over her.
And she let the segmented hands grope her, let the mouth-tendrils dance on her lips. Feeding meant a slurry vomited into her mouth, thick but already chewed. She just had to accept and swallow.
The opposite of rot is empty, dead. Ava would dream herself clean and modest. Metamorphose in her little cocoon. Children would squirm and eat with burning insistence, but she would not feel it. She would not—need not—feel anything.
Her legs spread, but they weren’t her legs anymore.
She’d asked for the second bite, the double dose of anesthesia. More stone for her castle walls.
Even if she was letting the enemy in through the gate.