Luxuria (Part 1)

This is hell.

He awoke with the crack of lightning. The rolling thunder brought him to his senses. There was a damp warmth around his waist and a chilling breeze on his chest. Through flashes of light, he saw the Woman and Serpents embellished in gold above him. As he laid on his back, he faced the Woman who stared from the mural above.

He saw her beauty, felt her pain, and knew her fury.

This is our hell…

The lightning snapped him to attention. This Victorian bedroom he found himself in was vast but barren. The green walls were scratched by a tall desperate creature. A single frosted glass door waited at the foot of the bed. Through the milky glass he saw a silhouette. A still, lifeless, silhouette.

He opened his mouth to speak and heard nothing. A stabbing pain in his abdomen pulled his voice back into his body. He grasped his groin and felt the familiar warmth.

Blood.

I don’t know who you are.
But I know why you’re reading this.

He panicked. With a muted grunt, he flung the sheets off of him and grasped the cotton seams around his waist. There was no pain. He felt his skin and found only a crusty, angled, scar stretching between his legs. He shot up from the bed and stumbled on frail, weak legs to stand.

In the corner of the room, he saw a mirror. When the lightning flashed, a young brown man dressed in gray cotton with short hair stared back at him. His hands and pants were stained red.

How did he get here? What happened to him?

It was like trying to recall things that never existed. His name, his home, his very purpose of being, were vacant pains in his memory. He turned to the silhouette of the woman for answers.
She was gone. She had taken the truth with her.

We have sinned against Life and Bliss.
You are lost. It’s better that way.

The door was unlocked. He took one look at the room that he had found himself in and longed to remember why he had laid in this bed. It was not his. He did not belong here. The walls were too close and the ceiling was too high. A folded paper rested atop a little table near the tall door. He picked it up and found himself struggling to read the characters.
They looked so familiar. He stuffed the letter into his pants pocket without a second thought. It served him no use now.

He gripped the cold metal handle and twisted. The rusted mechanism creaked and popped before giving away. A lurking emotion told him to stop. Opening this door would seal his fate. He felt it was too late. He had come so far already. Why would he stop?

This door had been opened before.

When you remember…

Never forget..

He pushed and it splintered underneath his gentle push. The cold air rushed through the cracks as if he stood in a vacuum. The blood on his hands adhered his palm to the metal knob. A pungent odor of decay swelled his nose and stung his eyes. It tasted of sharp iron and revolting bile. He gasped and the miasma swelled in his lungs.

It carried a sound. One so deafening it was silent. A wailing so quiet he could hear nothing else.

“Never again.”

This is hell.

-------------------------------------

Beyond the glass door, he had found himself in a narrow, stone corridor.

To his left, a path that lead to a questionable abyss.

To his far right, a candle burned underneath an exquisite portrait.

He stepped from the doorway and paused. A chilling draft came from the darkest end of the hall. It carried the rot and plague that lingered in the air. He could taste the grueling spores and the slime they left on his tongue. His dry mouth was violated by this damp swill. But there was no time to linger on this suffering. This place was maddening and oppressive.

He turned his back to the void and briskly paced towards the canvas on the wall. The cold gray floor stung and numbed the soles of his bare feet. Cobblestone walls stretched endlessly upward and impossibly onward. He had to remain focused on the light at the end of his decision. When the apprehension distracted him, it was as if the floor rolled against him.

If a baby were to cry.

So he remained steadfast and forward. As he drew closer, he saw the detail on the canvas above the small fire. It was antiquated but he could not say from when. The colored oils, still seemingly fresh, rolled down from the frame and dripped to the floor. On it, he saw two men, two women, and a black winged Cherub.

The highest man, clad in armor and straddled on his brown horse, reached down to lift a woman that reached for the sky. His gaze was fixed on her breasts while his hand gripped a red cloth from between her legs. She would not tear her eyes from the sky.

The second man pulled the other woman to her feet. In his nude glory, he grasped at her and longingly appreciated her fair skin and features. The second woman called to her sister in the most uncomfortable of poses.

“Never again.”

Was it her? He hesitated without breaking his focus on the art. His own voice was still caught in his chest so he could not call out for clarity. It could have been the woman from beyond the door. Someone who knew where he was, who he was, or why this place existed.

Where none would hear..

He carried onward.

As he drew closer to the candle-lit painting, the taste of bile swelled from deep within. His vision, the only thing that he had known in this life, grew darker and blurred. His steps became heavier and more clumsy with every pace he took. He began to feel the warmth from the candle on his skin and saw the smallest pair of eyes on the work of art.

A black-winged, infantile creature, wrapped its arms around the neck of the brown horse. It looked at him. He knew it was watching him. While the other classical eyes lusted over the other or begged for escape into the blue heavens, this inhuman pair watched his every step and tumble.

It smiled.

Then it would soon be silenced.

“No... Not again!”

The glass door shattered and snapped him to his senses. Instinctively, he pivoted on his heel and turned to see what caused the commotion. He would soon learn the consequential nature of looking back. The past, and all the mysteries within, waited behind those who carried onward.

Like a beast, the Darkness would wait until this creature was at its weakest.

Like a madness, the Darkness would seep into his heart.

She was kneeling in the shattered remnants. The Woman from behind the Glass towered into the upward shadows and reached her lanky arms into the room. What remained of her flesh was green and bulbous. Her clothing was ripped and draped over her disfigured frame.

Speak your truth

In his terror, he spoke the first words that came to his tongue.

“I'm sorry.”

It heard him. It squatted down to eye level and studied him from fifty paces away. On her face were open wounds that split bone. Her fractured skull was like horns upon her crown.

“No..” She hissed.

The putrid odor grew stronger. It burned to look at her. It was sickening to breath in her presence. He could not look away. He spoke again.

“I'm so sorry.”

His voice cracked. The emaciated creature embraced itself and shook violently. It murmured curses in her voice and slammed against the wall. He whispered the words again as it mashed it's brow against the coarse wall. His apology was muted by the rumbling of stone and bone

“No. Never. Never again.”

She would never forgive him for leaving that room. The curses rose to a roaring shout and he knew better than to wait. Instinctively, he spun on his heel and sprinted to the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Never again!”

For every footstep he took, he knew she was stampeding closer. He could not look back. He stayed on his course despite the howling madness behind him. The ground shook in her fury and the air tasted of acid.

“No! No!” Wailed the monster.

Twenty more paces.

To deaf walls.

He could make it. No distractions. Ignore the fear. Suppress the regret and guilt. Her nails grated along the cold stone as she reached. Jagged claws split the longest of his wiry hairs.

Red paint dripped from the mouths of the characters.

Fifteen more paces.

He could feel her breath on his neck. It was warm, hurried, and impassioned. In this cold, barren, hall, she was the life that he longed for. The urge to fall back inside her fought his very need to survive.

Ten more paces.

“I'm sorry…” He croaked out between agonized breaths. His chest burned. His thighs ached. There was a burden on his shoulders that held him down.

Seven more paces.

He wanted to stop. A weight in his heart dragged him below sanity. The terror caught his breath.

Five more paces.

It was fear, confusion, and aggression that pulled his mind into darkness. Gravity would have it's way with his body. The poor man was so concentrated on moving forward, he never bothered to look below.

The fire underneath the painting was a candle on the wall of a sudden descent.

“No!” Shrieked the Giantess of the Acrid Hall.

Momentum carried him out of her reach and vengeance. He slammed into the granite wall, splitting his brow on the iron candelabra, and crashed infinitely farther below.

You will find no Mercy here.

He could not say how long he fell nor when he he landed.

But he recalled how he awoke perfectly.

A crack of lightning and roaring thunder. The round, broken, bed and the bloodied sheets. A dull throbbing raced across a scar on his scalp. The Medusa above him.

A Woman beyond the frosted glass.

You have no voice.

He was trapped.

You must scream.

-END-

Thank you for reading my original horror, Luxuria. This is a rough draft I'd love to get some feedback on.

Submitted December 19, 2018 at 01:24AM by rhysticism https://ift.tt/2rFApAO