I slam down into the middle of the desolate street, my shadows erupting outward, smothering the cracked concrete in a thick, suffocating smog. I scan the area through my pitch-black eyes, listening for any sound of movement.
When all I hear is silence, I glide low to the ground, slithering over the earth like a serpent, kicking up clouds of filth in my wake. As I reach the heart of the square, I rise to my full height and begin striding forward.
Then I stop and my gaze locks onto the white, withered tree standing crooked in the center. Weeds choke the cracked ground around its base, and as my gaze drifts upward, I spot four bodies hanging limply from its gnarled branches, a noose tight around each of their necks.
A blonde, a brunette, and two bald women, their faces swollen and purple, skin pale as bleached bone, swaying gently in the stale air.
My jaw clenches hard because now I understand why they’re all crawling towardmylittle light. She’s the only breathing human on Ninth Isle, and these greedy fucking vultures can’t wait.
They’d rather devour the quick burst of death than savor the rich, sweetness of prolonged terror and soul-shattering fear.
Typical.
I’m alone, but this strange house feels odd and too still, like its waiting for something terrible to happen.
I take a few tiptoes forward, the floorboards groaning under my bare feet like they’re warning me to turn back and stay safe in the bedroom.
But once I find a bathroom, I stagger inside it instead and lunge for the sink. After frantically turning the rusted taps, it gurgles and spits before releasing a stream of brown, filthy water, the old pipes creaking in protest.
I don’t care, I cup it with trembling hands anyway and drink like a dying animal, the metallic, rotten taste coating my tongue.
It scrapes down my throat and claws at my empty stomach, but I keep gulping until I’m coughing and spluttering on it.
I splash the icy water over my face, trying to wake myself up, trying to force my way out of this dream.
This isn’t real. It can’t be real. It’s a fucking nightmare. Some kind of twisted paralysis and he is my sleep demon. I’m still asleep somewhere. I have to be.
When I finally lift my head and stare into the smeared, dirt-streaked mirror, the girl looking back at me is a stranger.
My face is hollowed out, cheeks sunken, with eyes too broad and shaded. My hair hangs in filthy, tangled ropes, and my skin has the waxy, bloodless pallor of a corpse.
I don’t recognize her. I don’t recognizeme.
My fingers slowly rise to my chest, tracing the black tally marks burned into my skin, and they pulse faintly under my touch like something alive.
Sixty-two days.
What does that even mean? What is this thing living inside me?
My mind begins to fracture, spiralling out of control.
What happened to Mattie? The girls? Were they ever real, or did he make me see them too? Am I still in that street under that pig? Am I fucking already dead?
And then the worst memory floods back in.
The way he invaded me, the way he reached inside my body and forced it to betray me. I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t fight it. My own flesh turned against me while he watched above me, pulling all the strings.
I feel sick and disgusting. Violated in a way I don’t have words for.
They told me I would never feel pleasure again after that night.
They said my body was too ruined, too broken, and that the parts of me capable of feeling anything good had been cut away and taken forever.
And yet here comes this huge, monstrous entity, and he defies all of it. He reached inside me and ripped catastrophic climaxes out of my body one after another. Forcing my nerves to scream with pleasure I didn’t want, or shouldn’t want.
My own cunt deceived me, gushing and squirting while I let that thing make me come harder than I ever have in my life… while the girls I care about might be dead or suffering somewhere on this island.
The thought makes a violent sob tear out of me.
