The Catacombs

Deep within the forsaken tombs:

The world is cold. The tendrils of the ever-present fog creep around my feet as the starved fire slowly wanes to ash and ember. The three women leave their shadows, their green light overwhelming that pure of the dying flame. They seem part of the mist, their white linen dresses indistinguishable from the coiling clouds.

I sit with my back against some monastery grave, the vestiges of an order long forgotten. Quietly the bones rest unmourned in this ancient place. Ancient to them as to me, and yet to me they are of uncounted time before, interlopers interred here in a place older than history. How I envy them.

Laughing, the women come for me. Forgive me, Ella, I pray as their soft touch excites my dumb body, goosebumps covering my flesh. Leaning down, one gently tickles my ear with her fingers before reaching around my head and lifting it up into hers. We kiss, her cold dead lips alive with hunger. With one arm I embrace her, pulling her willing body into mine. With the other, I shove the monk’s broken femur into her heart.

Jumping from me, the black poison inside her vomiting from the wound, she paints me with the spoiled blood of my companions. Collapsing into the embers, she writhes, bursting into hellish tongues of fire. Her companions, unfazed, continue in their amours. Stroking me, they plant their lips upon my cheeks, working down to my chin, and finally, coming to my neck.

There’s no pain with the bite, the soporific fog more anesthetic than anything else. With the monk’s rib I stab at one, but she catches my hand. My fleeting strength gone, the weapon falls from my grasp.

Some hour later, they leave me, my cold body forsaken in the darkness.