Page 58 of The Flesh Remembers
Blackwood’s voice rang out, his words drenched in reverence. “Do not hold back. They are vessels, and you are their lifeblood. Pour your souls into them. Let them consume you.”
The cultists obeyed with renewed fervour, their cries growing louder as the room became a maelstrom of writhing bodies and trembling devotion. Eleanor’s heart pounded as she felt herself pulled into the tide, her body responding against her will. The heat radiating from the effigy seemed to seep into her skin, igniting something primal within her.
Overhead, the apparatus roared to life, its coils sparking wildly as if feeding on the energy saturating the room. The shadows it cast on the walls twisted unnaturally, growing darker and distorted with every pulse of light. Eleanor squinted as she watched the shadows begin to take on vaguely human shapes, their limbs writhing and merging like a tangle of desperate souls.
A low hum filled her ears, building into a deafening crescendo. Then, she heard it: James’s voice.
“Eleanor,” he whispered, his tone soft but laced with something unrecognizable. “Do you see now? Do you see what we’ve become?”
She turned, her eyes scanning the room, but he was nowhere to be found. The voice came again, louder this time, echoing from within the apparatus.
“Look closer.”
Eleanor’s gaze snapped upward, horror twisting her insides as she saw faces within the coils, distorted and anguished, their mouths open in silent screams. The realization hit her like a thunderclap: these were the souls of the sacrificed, trapped within the apparatus and fuelling its power. Their eyes seemed to follow her, pleading for release even as their forms flickered and shifted.
“Don’t look away,” James whispered, his voice curling around her like black smoke. “This is what love requires.”
Eleanor’s knees buckled. She clutched her chest, desperate to steady the storm brewing inside her. Nausea tangled with something far worse, an aching, unwelcome desire. Was this truly what love required? The thought clawed at her, unravelling years of fragile belief. Love had been a sanctuary; a dream she’d clung to after losing the only people who had ever loved her. As a child, she had searched for it in empty spaces, aching for someone to hold onto. When she found James, she thought she had finally grasped happiness. And now, she stood at the precipice, staring into the abyss of what that love had become.
The apparatus pulsed again, vibrating through her bones, a rhythmic call to surrender. Shadows writhed within its coils, faces flickering in tortured silence. She couldn’t turn away. Their eyes, pleading, accusing, held her captive.
James’s voice was velvet-soft, but it cut deeper than any blade. “Do you see now? Do you see what we’ve become?”
A breath hitched in Eleanor’s throat. The warmth was spreading, seeping into her skin and clouding her thoughts. Itwas intoxicating and unnatural, blurring the edges of her fear and twisting her into something unrecognizable.
If love demanded sacrifice, could she bear its weight? Could she give herself over to it, knowing it meant unmaking the last pieces of who she once was?
The machine pulsed again, its hum now indistinguishable from the rhythm of her own racing heart.
And Eleanor realized she was already too far gone.
Final letter from Marian Collins to her mother
Dearest Mama,
This may be the last letter I can write you for some time. Things here have been progressing badly. Lord Blackwood is not the sort of man Dr. Fairfax should have ever gotten mixed up with or accepted money from. But, there is no help for it now. He is the benefactor, and so we must follow his orders.
I am afraid, Mama. I fear that something terrible is going to happen. I have done such things, Mama, such terrible, wonderful things that I shudder to think of them, but also cannot stop thinking of them. I know I have done evil, that we have all done evil here, yet the bliss I have experienced was unlike anything I have ever felt. I know there is evil here, but I am drawn to it. I want to become a part of it.
I went to Eleanor’s room last night. I know I shouldn’t have, but I was frightened and lonely. She looked so beautiful in her sheer nightgown. I could see the outline of her body through the fabric, and it stirred me. That mustshock you greatly, but I am different now, Mama. Eleanor and I have lain together. We have touched and explored one another’s bodies in a way I didn’t think possible. The pleasure I have felt with her is greater than I have ever known.
But I am also drawn to her fiancé, James. His power is undeniable and absolute. I want him, Mama. I want him to ravish me and destroy me utterly. I want to be broken by him and remade into whatever he wishes me to be.
I know you will not understand these words, and that is all right. I have done my best and did what I thought was right. I hope to see you again one day soon. Please kiss Papa for me.
Your loving daughter,
Marian
Mother of the New Flesh
The graveyard outside the clinic had become a theatre of decay and lust, its tombstones and crypts illuminated by the flickering light of red torches. Cultists moved among the graves like spectres, their bodies bared to the night air, their movements slow and deliberate as they prepared for the next stage of the ritual.
Eleanor followed James through the labyrinth of stone, a strange mix of excitement and fear filling her as she watched pairs and groups collapse onto the damp earth. One couple knelt before a freshly opened grave, their hands entwined as they murmured incantations. The man reached into the grave, pulling out a fragment of bone, which he pressed to his lover’s lips. She kissed it reverently, tears streaming down her face, before her lover smiled and gently pushed her backonto the cold, wet earth. She eagerly spread her legs wide for him, her arms outstretched to him in supplication, and he brought the rounded tip of that bone between her legs and smiled as he inserted it inside of her. She cried out, her back arching sharply as her lover increased the pace, and Eleanor could see evidence of the woman’s arousal glistening in the moonlight as again and again that bone penetrated her. After a few moments more, they fell into each other’s arms, their cries of ecstasy mingling with the distant hum of the apparatus.
Nearby, a group of three cultists had gathered around an ornate mausoleum, their bodies pressed together in a tangled mass of limbs. One of them held a blade, its edge glinting in the torchlight, and used it to carve a small rune into the flesh of another’s chest. The blood dripped onto the stone below, quickly smeared into the shape of a sigil by trembling fingers.
James stopped beside a cracked tombstone, his eyes glowing faintly as he turned to face Eleanor. “Do you understand now?” he asked, his voice low and commanding. “This is devotion. This is what it means to love truly.”
