Page 65 of The Flesh Remembers
The others turned to watch, their expressions fractured. Some recoiled in horror, others leaning forward withsomething closer to reverence. Hollow eyes, empty hands, lips parted in quiet awe.
James pulled away from Eleanor, the ghost of warmth still curling at the edges of his nerves, a sickly aftertaste of pleasure warring with the fractured reality before him.The cult,He tried to speak, but the words disintegrated on his tongue.
Eleanor nodded, gaze flickering toward the shifting bodies at the far end of the clearing. “Some will run. Some will try to forget. But others…”
James followed her stare. A cluster had gathered, their whispers rising in hushed, fervent tones. Their fingers trembled as they reached toward the ruins of the garden, the still-quivering blooms, and the remnants of bodies that had not yet been fully claimed.
A new kind of worship was forming.
James swallowed, the weight of his transformation pressing deeper, carving into his bones. The night had not ended with the garden’s final cry; it had birthed something far worse—something that would never,couldnever, be undone.
He turned to Eleanor and felt fear coil in his stomach for the first time. She was watching, her expression unreadable—not fear, not acceptance, but something else.
“This isn’t over,” he murmured.
Her fingers tightened around his wrist, her smile slow, knowing. “No. It’s only just begun.”
The Garden of Flesh was not finished.
Eleanor caught her reflection in a pool of water tinged with blood nestled within the yawning trumpet-shaped blossoms. She blinked and touched her face, waiting for recognition to settle. The woman she saw bore little resemblance to the one she had been yesterday.
Her eyes, once dark as her hair, were now a luminous, haunting shade of amber, glowing like her veins, pulsing with some unnatural inner light.
The morning light stretched over the wreckage, casting everything in sickly gold. An uneasy hush crept through the air, thick with the echoes of what had transpired.
In the distance, voices stirred, some whispering of dissolution, others of rebirth.
But here, standing in the wreckage of their creation, James and Eleanor stood on the precipice.
Of something more terrible.
Or something far more wondrous
Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Eleanor Ashcroft
How can I even begin to describe what has happened? The world I knew is ending, unravelling thread by thread, replaced by something wretched and divine. Death, chaos, rebirth, they are all the same now.
I have seen and felt things that defy reason and should not exist. And yet, they do. And I exist within them. It was my selfishness, wasn’t it? My refusal to accept James’s death, my inability to let go. Had I simply mourned as any sane woman would, perhaps this horror, this bliss, would never have found me.
Would he have rested? Would I?
The Garden of Flesh clings to me still. I taste it, the sickly sweetness lingering on my tongue, and feel the phantom weight of the vines pressing against me, into me. It is obscene, unholy, and rapturous. I yield to them, surrender without hesitation, without shame. James is here. He understands. He speaks to them, and they answer.
That should frighten me.
It does frighten me.
And yet, I crave it.
I crave the certainty, the surrender, the promise of becoming more, something vast, something eternal. What human grief can compare to this? What earthly sorrow can hold against the rapture of belonging to something without end?
But I fear what lies ahead.
I fear what I have already become.
God help me, if He still listens.
The Brink of Transformation
