My hand bumped the flashlight and I dragged it closer to my body, slowly winding it up. The whirling hiss echoed around the chamber. I could only give a few twists before I felt exhausted.
The mud pulled away from me, all the trails that had leaked down going with it. I swallowed and slowly shifted the flashlight towards the box I was facing. I didn’t know what to expect. A chill raced up my spine. At first, all I saw was the coffin. Thick, pale wood with an unfamiliar language roughly etched in.
The lid suddenly fell off the coffin entirely, clattering to the ground upside down. Deep gashes were scratched into it, faded stains of blood left in trails. Someone had been put inside it alive. Someone had scratched and clawed, leaving fingernails embedded in the wood—torn from their fingers in their futile desperation to escape their prison.
Movement shifted behind the box. I swallowed, moving the flashlight up. A skeleton stood there, upright all on it’s own. The bones on its facemoved, the eye sockets and mouth forming an expression of amusement. Then a black tar surrounded it entirely, wrapping around the bones, melting them until it just became more black tar. Laughter rumbled over it, the black material shivering joyfully.
The sludge slid over the box, coming closer just as the flashlight went out again.
“Accept me inside you, Ava.” His voice was right beside me. Blood slid down into my eyes. I pinched them shut. I couldn’t run like my instincts wanted. I couldn’t do anything but lay here and die.
“Let me live inside you. I’dlovethat,” he said roughly as warm slime gently gripped my neck. I shuddered from his words. They were too fervent and demanding, too needy.
“You’re not human,” I whispered.
“I used to be. Actually, I used to be just like you, little witch,” he said in amusement, his voice chipper and loud.
“Me?” I asked and he hummed. His slimy body slid around my wrists and ankles, tightly holding me.
“There’s magic in your blood. A blessing… “ there was that damn word again. “A curse,” he added, hissing his words like a snake. The muck slid around my biceps and my waist—a tight grip that shouldn't be possible for inanimate material. It was everywhere, twirled around me, so many different tentacles now gripping every part of me as if it wanted to keep me from getting away. I was a fly in a spider’s web.
This slime was him. It was my climber. Some new monster who had lured us to uncover his lair. Had every body here suffered the same fate?
My head ached as I was forcefully pulled upright. The creature slowly lifted me from the ground until my shoes dangled. He had me suspended in the air, every inch of me in the grip of his many slimy tentacles.
“That splinter is in your blood. There’s no getting it out. However, I’m immune to such things. Let me in, Ava. Let me save you from that nasty thing under your skin.” He was like the snake, goading Eve to eat an apple. Or a demon trading favors for the small price of my soul.
“Why?” I mumbled. My head fell to the side but a moment later warm, thick slime slid around my head, cradling it. It felt strange being suspended like this, every part of me held taut by this thing. I felt his body dripping in trails down mine but moments later some would slide back up, rejoining the bigger mass.
“When I felt you, I knew I wanted you. Wanted to live inside you. Wanted towearyou. And I knew you needed my help. Iwillsave you, Ava. The only other option is death.” He sounded so sure. The creature tightened itself snugly around my neck and around my thighs.
“Parasite,” I mumbled.
“No, I won’t harm you. I want to help you.” He emphasized the words sharply. I tried to move my arm but the mud held me too tight. He had me trapped, held captive, and unable to move an inch.
A sense of self-preservation took force, pumping adrenaline in me as a last-ditch effort to live. My breathing came faster again and I struggled in his grasp, a burst of energy to save myself. My mind momentarily became sharper.
“What do you want!” I yelled, panic lacing my words instead of the sickly calm tone I had moments earlier. My head rattled with the noise I made.
“Just a kiss,” he said with a laugh that echoed all around us, ringing roughly in my head. Slime moved up from my chin, sliding over my lips.
“Stop,” I whimpered through clenched teeth, afraid to open my mouth. A tendril of slime played at the seam of my lips.
“Whimper again, Ava.Begme to stop,” he asked with thick desire.
“Let me go,” I whispered.
“But Ava, I don’t want you to die. Look, you hold all the power. Your body will reject me if you don’t accept,” he said it like a joke. As if he were tricking me into a devil’s deal, but did I have options? Death or him?
I sagged in his hold, the brief burst of energy dying and a strong exhaustion rolling in to take its place.
“What other option do you have? And you hit your head. It looks bad. I can fix that too. I can make everythingallbetter,” he purred velvety like a luxury car salesman.
I heard my ragged breath fill the cavernous room in the silence that followed. I was dying. I could feel the sickness in my bones. Could feel that looming, angry dead house in my blood, stretching up towards my heart, staking claim to body and soul. I could feel my cracked skull, blood still seeping unabated.
“Hospital,” I rasped.
“Hours to leave the cave and more hours to town. You think you can hold on? Don't kid yourself. Nothing can help you now. Nothing… except for me of course. Just one kiss,” he said. A tentacle slithered in the seam of my lips, pressing in past my lips and brushing against my teeth.
