Page 75 of The Flesh Remembers
I unravel.
I offer myself, hands trembling, mind dissolving, soul undone.
There is no resistance. There is no escape.
Only him.
Only James.
Only the abyss, waiting to swallow us whole.
The End of the Ritual
The grave was not a place anymore. It was an opening, a wound in the fabric of the world pulsing with something thick and unseen, something Eleanor could feel before she even stepped into it. The air around her shimmered, electric with tension, the unseen force of something waiting, something hungry. The remnants of the apparatus lay scattered around the disturbed earth, still humming with necrotic energy, whispering in a language she couldn't quite hear. But she knew what it was saying.
She knew who was calling her.
Eleanor had walked this path before, stood at the edge of this broken place when she still believed she could resist, and thought she could stand alone. That illusion had long since shattered. James had made sure of that. He had taken her,corrupted her, claimed pieces of her she hadn't even known existed. But she had still held onto something, some small, useless sliver of herself that she had clung to like a fool, believing it was hers to keep.
Now, she was here to give him the rest.
The moment her foot crossed the boundary of the disturbed soil, the world collapsed. The ground vanished beneath her, the sky ripped away, and she was falling. No, not falling, being pulled. The darkness wrapped around her like unseen hands, dragging her down, down, down into the void where James had been waiting. It was not just emptiness. It was him. His presence coiled through the abyss like a sentient thing, thick and heavy, sinking into her lungs, curling around her ribs.
She gasped, but there was no air here.
There was only him.
And then he spoke, and his voice wasn’t just sound.
It was a touch.
A pressure at her throat.
A weight on her skin.
A command inside her bones.
"Eleanor."
His voice hit her like a lightning strike, the sharp inhale as if her ribs were caving under its weight, threatening to shatter her entirely. He had not touched her yet, not truly, and already she felt his hold tightening around her. It was suffocating, overwhelming, and delicious. The void moved, shifting around her like something alive, and suddenly she was not standing; she was suspended. The abyss held her inplace, weightless yet restrained, unseen threads binding her wrists, her thighs, her throat, spreading her open for him before he had even laid a hand on her.
"You came back," James murmured, his voice slipping over her skin like a breath, like a brand.
He was behind her, then in front of her, everywhere. His presence was more than a body, more than a man, something greater, something monstrous. When it came, his hand was cold and firm, dragging down the curve of her waist over the trembling muscles of her stomach, his grip settling low, possessive, knowing.
"You’re ready now," he whispered.
Not a question.
A sentence.
A fact.
A judgment.
She shuddered, her body giving in to him before her mind could catch up. The darkness pressed closer, a force tightening around her wrists, her ankles, pulling her open, holding her still. There was no resistance, no power in her limbs, only submission, only the need to be taken, broken, remade.
"You should have given in sooner," he mused, dragging his lips over the curve of her throat, his teeth scraping, teasing, threatening. "But you always had to be difficult, didn’t you?"
