Page 36 of The Bleeding Woods

He’s done something to my Clara. Grayson, that absolute villain, has done something to my Clara. I can feel her connection faltering as I race across my domain.

It was irresponsible to induce my influence on Jade remotely.

I assumed her death would be medicine more easily swallowed in private.

I wanted to give Clara the time to process this triumph on her own, but I should have known better.

I should have stayed with my sweet girl.

Now, because of my carelessness, she is in danger.

The barbarian must have hurt her. He must have seen her beautiful chaos and rejected it.

He must have tried to cage it, in all his ignorance.

He’s just like those that made me. They’re all the same.

Humans are all the same. Wretched, disgusting creatures.

Wasteful consumers of oxygen. Pillagers of all things precious.

I obeyed. Obedience was our highest form of affection after all. I went rigid beneath the restraints clanked shut around my wrists and ankles. I took small, huffing breaths that barely expanded my open torso.

From here, my sight could only skim the coalescing fibers of muscle, bone, and floral matter within.

My innards were always the EHKI’s for the viewing and for the taking, a show with souvenirs.

Hemlock scooped a mound of organ meat from beneath my rib cage, clipping the connective tendons with shimmering, sterilized scissors.

I yipped in pain. She pressed an unseen button to activate a restraint around my neck.

“It’ll grow back,” she assured.

My metal leash made it impossible to glimpse the collection of samples gathering just out of eyeshot. However, I could smell my own blood, and my own mixture of inhuman, herbal fluids. Copper and pine. Iron and cinnamon.

“You’re doing very well, JS-7R,” she purred.

“Th-thank you,” I replied, my small voice still a flowering crackle.

She tilted her head, coming close enough to douse me in her putrid Easter lily perfume. How I hated it, that essence so artificial. I thought she’d offer praise in light of my attempt to speak. Instead, she slid a slit down my throat and found my vocal cords for further inspection.

What if this is what Grayson has in store for my Clara, and my sweet girl hasn’t the foresight to realize it?

What if he’s weaseled his way into her emotions, just as Hemlock had weaseled into mine?

Their kind may not have the ability to speak mind-to-mind, but they do wield the power of deceit.

It is their favorite weapon. Lies are the infrastructure on which every society has been built.

Lies of camaraderie forge bonds. Lies of control sedate the masses.

Lies of love melt weary hearts, and my dearest Clara has the weariest.

While his brother played the fool, Grayson Warner plays the knight.

He’s made a swooning princess of my love.

All it takes is a tendril of misplaced trust. Hemlock made certain I knew that well.

Now that he’s seen a sliver of Clara’s true form, there’s no telling what he’ll do to her.

If he subjects her to even a fraction of what I experienced, I will annihilate him for it.

He’s taken her from me. I will annihilate him regardless.

He’ll become a puddle of pleas for death’s release.

If there’s a grim reaper hiding between the cosmic curves of our reality, they will beg to free him.

I’ll make his demise the most horrific they’ve ever swept away with their scythe.

Branches will pierce the inverted arch at his abdomen, slither into his lower intestines, and spill blood into his pelvic bowl.

I’ll make them coil his spine as the disembowelment commences, ripping ribs out of place on the way.

I’ll strangle him from the inside, making every agonizing moment count.

He won’t black out. I won’t allow that. Shock spares humans and monsters alike; I know that all too well.

He will not be spared. For what he’s done, for the way he’s become an infection to what’s mine, he will pay with his wits about him.

Love is my muse and death is my medium. This will be my consummate masterpiece.

My magnum opus. My crowning moment of savage artistry.

By the time I arrive at Jade’s death site, Grayson has taken my perfect girl away.

The two couldn’t have gotten far, though.

It’s clear he’d been trying to return to the station that marks the southern edge of my realm.

So strategic, yet so small-minded. Even if he is foolish enough to lead her there, in no time, I will be riding the high of Jade’s freshly blooming blood roses.

They spring up from her cadaver so eagerly.

It’s almost as though she’s offering her life force to me willingly, begging from the beyond for me to offer her sister the kindness she failed to.

I consume her quintessence one petal at a time, making sure to savor it.

Every victim has their own unique flavor, and Jade tastes exactly as I’d expected her to.

She’s all smoke and rage. Sadness and denial.

She’s a pathetic conglomeration of missing parts fused together just convincingly enough to make a picture.

Jade Lovecroft was never whole, not really.

Through the florets, I feel the gaping hole she called a heart, the cavern she fist-fought to call attention away from.

She bursts with sour zest, anger distillate, and becomes my personal elixir of wrath.

My veins bulge with radiant redness, my mind sharpens to a knife’s edge, my strength multiplies, and my linkage to all that surrounds me is dipped in iron.

I am one with my pocket underworld and nourished to capacity.

Now I have all that I need to rescue my Clara.

I will clear her vision of all human distortions.

Grayson might have her drugged with charm, but I am not so easily swayed.

Clara can’t help her nature; her heart is dark but pure, contrary to her belief.

She needs me to protect her from the imitation heroes of the world, to whisk her away from the whims of the wishful.

She needs me to be her corner of shadow in a world made dull by the light.

I’ll sing her sweet melodies until the sun dies and we reign supreme.

We shall reign supreme.

Together, Clara and I will show this rotten raceway of mortal dominion what real power looks like.

Together, bound by love and biology, we will plunge through the particle barrier that keeps me prisoner and unleash ourselves on the earth.

We’ll spread spores of telepathy through the population and turn them all into the primal beasts they hide within.

Humanity will tear itself to shreds, and when the dust clears, all that remains will be trained to look to us as gods.

Vengeful, but rightful, gods. Humanity will grovel at our feet, finally embodying their bone-deep deformities.

In our eyes, they shall seek redemption, and redemption we shall never grant.

Punishment, however, is most definitely on the table.

With Clara at my side, there’s nothing I cannot do.

With Clara at my side, I will never again suffocate in solitude.

Grayson can pray to every star in the sky that she succumbs to him, but no star is a match for the antimatter that exists in us.