Chapter Eleven/Payment In Full
~ 2023 ~
The horrid corpse of Naia shambled toward us, cackling. Her bones shifted back into place, making sickening cracks and snaps as it did. The arm that was twisted back wrong gave a sickening, horrifying breaking noise, before violently whipping around to its proper space. Flesh broke anywhere there was a snap, sinew fraying like loose cords. Ronni lets loose a terrified shriek, nearly fainting into me. She backs into the wall of rock behind us, shaking in her boots.
I turn back to the shambling dead thing, it’s skin breaking and tearing apart at the seams. Her teeth started dropping out of her mouth, pressed out by disgusting, needle-like fangs. Her mouth opened wider than it could possibly ever go, skin around her lips splitting apart, giving way to a gigantic gaping slit. She could swallow me whole if she wanted to. Her hair, slick with blood, clung to her face like a filthy shawl.
“What the fuck are you!” I shouted to the beast, watching as more and more of her flesh decomposed before my eyes. Her clothes, torn, bloody, withheld large chunks of flesh within them. It never bothered tearing them from its body, just letting them fall from its body like animal droppings. It left the creature looking disgusting, malformed, bloated.
It cackles, reaching up, holding my head gently in its hands. “It's me!” It gave a parody of a grin though its chelsea smile. Its voice comes out warbled, deeper, struggling to get out though the bile and pus. “Naia! I thought you fantasized about what secrets I was packing. I saw you staring. Is this exotic enough for you!” It screeches, digging its nails, its claws, down the sides of my face, leaving deep gashes. I scream in pain, backing up from it. It opens its impossibly large mouth, suckling on my blood.
My hand runs up to the sides of my face, feeling the deep, gashed wounds it left on me. My entire finger can lay in one of them. “What the fuck are you! Get away from me, monster! Stay far away from me!”
It laughs again, the horrible hyena-like sound coming from the abomination. “But baby! Whatever happened to you and me! Are you really going to just throw that away?” It licks over my face, a horrifying parody of affection, nuzzling into my chest, before taking a huge bite out of my pectorals. Looking up and spitting it back out into my face. “Ahahaha!” Mouth wide, black souless eyes bugging from its head, it cackles right in my face.
I scream in rage pushing it over, kicking it over and over again. With each slam, though, the beast just laughs and laughs at me. “Stop it! Stop laughing at me!” It doesn’t bother to get up off the floor, so I keep wailing on the horrible thing. Over and over, I kick. It’s like slamming into rock, trying to push through steel, but it still gives. “I beat you bloody once! I can just keep doing it until you stop getting up!”
It cackles, horrible, ear piercing. “And what, dear Edgar, are you going to do about the rest of us?”
Suddenly, I hear Ronni shriek. I whip my head around to see something has grabbed onto her ankle. She falls, dragged behind the rock, behind the wall of fog. “No! Please, no! This isn’t… This isn’t how it was supposed to go! This wasn’t my plan!” Three, four, six pairs of horrible, scaley, monstrous arms reach out of the mist, grabbing onto her, dragging her away, her scream piercing through the air.
More arms pull up over the cliffside, claws digging into the rockface. There’s too many of them to count! I back up, as horrid, shrieking abominations start to claw their way to me. Slowly encroaching on me, features barely being made out though the fog edge.
My head swivels around the dark mist. I see shadowy figures of the monsters, all encroaching on me. “Please! You have to understand, I didn’t have any part of this! This was all Ronni! She, she forced me to! Please, I don’t deserve this!”
I feel one’s hot breath on the back of the neck. I turn around to swing, smashing it in the face. But that breaks the trance. Soon all of them are rushing me, swarming, coating me. I push, I tear, I scrape at them, but more and more flood out of the fog, surrounding me. One takes a bite out of my calf, searing pain through my body, buckling me over. After that, it was over. They descended on me like carrion, sharks smelling chum in the water. Ripping and devouring me apart. I feel my intestines sliding out of my body, being unspooled by one of the vile creatures. The joints in my limbs stretch, pulling them out of their sockets, tearing the flesh around them.
I can barely see it through my tears, barely hear it though my screams. But slowly, almost seductively, the thing that was Naia walks up over to me, tisking each step of the way. “Poor, stupid Edgar. I’m sorry, master storyteller, but your yarn is up. Your payment is accepted.” It pulls its leg up, those statement shoes still holding on, hovering over my face, holding still. It gives a final, huge, predatory smile, before slamming it do–
I sigh, looking up into the sky. The fog was letting up, finally. The mist receded back into the sea from which it came. My sisters celebrated, giggling amongst themselves.
“Hey!” one of my girls, Mira, whined, pushing against another. “You got the eyes last time! You know they’re my favorite, Sereia! Aren’t you gonna share?”
Sereia chuckled, booping her on the face between the eyes. “Excuse me! I didn’t see you holding the lughead down. You know the rules, your kill, your choice.”
The two of them squabble for a bit, but I just shrug. It’s not like it was going to go to anyone but Mira. Her adorable pouty face with those shimmering violet scales always won any arguments she could get into. I lean over, ripping the chain off of what was left of my dear brother’s torso, pulling clean though a break in his spine.
I walked over to see what remained of my poor ex wife. Her bones were already being cleaned through. Must not have had much meat on those bones. Trying to stay fashionable for the cameras? Heh. Shame, this would have made a better special than whatever half baked idea she was planning. I reach down and pluck the ring off her finger, the knuckle snapping off with it.
“Naia!” I look back up to see Hali running over, embracing me, giggling. She’s coated in Veronica. Such a messy eater! She squeezes me tight, gives me a peck on the cheek. “You did amazing! Wrangling both of them yourself? Managing a double kill? You played them like a fiddle.”
I laugh, hugging her back. “I better have been able to! I spent enough time around them before you saved me. I should know how they work by now!” I smirk, shuffling her hair. “Besides, this is far from my first kill.”
Hali laughs, pushing me slightly. Runs her hand over the small bone spikes running down my back, making me shiver. “I can still be proud of you, dumdum. It might not have been your first, but it clearly was your most important, right?”
I sigh, smiling softly. Looking down at the jewelry in my claws. “No, I don’t think it was. I don’t need their approval, their respect, their fear. I mean it when I said they mean nothing to me.” I look into Hali’s beautiful smiling face, and then to the faces of all my sisters, laughing, feasting, living. “I have my real family right here. I’m just happy I can provide for them the way I always wanted to.”
She backs up, smiles at me gently. “So what are you waiting for! Aren’t you going to eat? You worked so hard for it. And there’s more than enough to go around!” She gestures at the two of them, slowly being picked clean.
I look at the chain softly, rubbing my thumb over the engraving, the Penrose crest I ran from those years ago. “Nah.” I turn, letting it and the ring slide out of my hand, fall into the sea below me, disappear into the mist. “Too rich for my blood.”
Patreon
Bloody jutstice....
One thing I found interesting in the last few chapters was the complete difference in how Edgar and Naia perceived the sirens. Clearly there are some disturbing non-human features but if they were as overtly horrifying as Edgar described them, then Naia would have freaked out, at least internally, when she first laid eyes on them.
After all, it's not like they had much reason to hide their appearance from someone that they weren't planning to devour. And sure, at least some of what Edgar is seeing is colored by fear and horror, but it does make me wonder who sees things the way they really are, or if neither do. I mean, the creature Edgar describes can't possibly also be the kind that also possesses an "adorable, pouty face" - doesn't even sound like it's capable of pouting, since you kinda need lips to do that? I dunno, just an interesting difference in the way they're perceiving the same thing.
gosh, that closing line!!!