Page 13 of The Flesh Remembers

My lust for James is overwhelming, far greater than anything I felt when he was alive. It’s as if the air here is charged with a manic passion, pulling me under. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s not entirely my own. The pendant Blackwood gave me feels like a conduit, amplifying these dark emotions—lust, guilt, and desire—until they consume me. Its silver symbol seems to focus everything back into me, twisting my thoughts and my will.

I can’t ignore the possibility that Blackwood is controlling it all, manipulating me through this cursed object. He sees me as nothing more than a pawn in his game, a tool to achieve his ends. But I won’t let him win. I’ll endure his schemes until James is fully restored, and then we’ll leave this place forever.

Still, a part of me wonders, are these feelings truly mine? Is the pendant merely revealing what I’ve buried deep within myself? The thought terrifies me. If this is who I am, what I want, then perhaps Blackwood isn’t the only one I should fear.

But I can’t falter now. James needs me, and I need him. Whatever it takes, I’ll see this through. And when it’s over, I’ll reclaim my life, choices, and freedom.

Science and Depravity

Eleanor gasped as his lips found her neck, his teeth grazing her skin in a way that sent a shiver down her spine. The boundary between love and possession blurred as his touch grew more insistent, his movements charged with an unsettling need.

The silver disk at her throat flared with light, vibrating in time with the crackle of the galvanic apparatus. Sparks rained down around them, illuminating the twisted carvings on the dais, figures writhing in ecstasy and agony, their expressions frozen in time.

Dr. Fairfax turned away, his face pale.

“This… this isn’t science,”

he muttered, his voice shaking.

“It’s depravity.”

Though he wanted success and had dreamed of it for years, he could not hide his disgust at the graphic sexuality now on display right in front of him.

Marian remained rooted in place, her lips parted as she watched the scene unfold. Her clipboard slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor. She flinched but didn’t pick it up, her eyes fixed on James’s hands as they moved across Eleanor’s body. The look in her eyes was a mixture of fear and longing as she tried unsuccessfully to quiet the sound of her rapid breath. She did not want to expose her lust to Dr. Fairfax. She didn’t want him to see her that way.

Frye’s face twisted in disgust.

“This is filth,”

Frye snarled, lunging toward the apparatus.

“If we don’t cut this off now, he’ll rip her apart and drag himself down to hell with her.”

But Blackwood blocked his path, his expression calm and commanding.

“You will not interfere,”

he said coldly.

“They are forging the bond that will stabilize him. If you disrupt this now, you’ll doom the entire experiment.”

Frye hesitated, his fists tightening.

“He’s bloody feeding on her!”

Frye looked imploringly at Eleanor, his eyes softening momentarily as he called to her.

“Eleanor, you don’t have to do this. You can still leave and save yourself.”

Eleanor felt a tremor of hesitation, even admiration for Frye at that moment, but looking back down at James, she knew she could not leave, no matter what the result.

Blackwood smiled faintly.

“Perhaps corruption is the price of creation.”

James’s movements grew more frenzied, his breathing a mix of growls and gasps. His arousal was undeniable, an obscene blend of love and feral hunger that radiated from him like heat. The galvanic coils surged, their energy crackling in wild arcs, making the air hum with electricity.

Eleanor cried out, her body throbbing as the sensations overwhelmed her. The coldness of James’s touch, the intensity of his gaze, the raw need in his movements, all of it blurred together into a storm of ecstasy and agony.

James roughly pulled at Eleanor’s black velvet dressing gown. He seemed desperate to touch her flesh, but not just to touch, he needed to bruise, to hurt. It was a brutal love that he was giving her, and yet Eleanor could not deny him. This man was her love, the man she had sold her soul to bring back, and she would not stop now. She could not.

James’s rough, cold fingers ripped at the fabric frenziedly, desperate to expose the white flesh beneath. Eleanor slipped her arms out of the fabric and shed the ragged remains of the dressing gown. She was nude beneath, and her body seemed to almost glow with an eerie, unnatural light as she gave herself over to this one final act that she hoped would cement her lover’s return. They had to become one. They would become one.

James let out a garbled moan at the sight of Eleanor’s white flesh. His black tinged fingers reached up and cupped her breasts. The ragged, yellowed nails scraped against her flesh hard enough to leave pale red scratches along her skin, but Eleanor paid them no mind.

“Yes, James, take me, take what you need from me.”

Eleanor closed her eyes and leaned closer to her reanimated lover. She lifted one of her breasts in her hands and brought it to James’ lips, slipping her pale pink nipple into his cold mouth. She shivered at the feeling of his icy tongue as it began to lap at her nipple. He was so cold, so unnaturally cold. Still, as he continued to touch and taste her, Eleanor felt the familiar burning passion return to her, and the wild, feral feeling of losing control bubbled up to the surface.

James’s bit down on her rough nipple, causing Eleanor to cry out in a mixture of pain and intense pleasure. She wanted it, right or wrong, her salvation or damnation; she wanted this done. She opened her eyes to look down into those of James. Where once they had been the blue of a cloudless summer sky, they were now a much paler, milky blue, the edges rimmed with red bloodshot veins. He was a horror, it was true, but she loved him. She wanted him. She would always want him.

James raised his head from her breast and smiled at her, her blood staining his lips and teeth from where he had bitten her. James pulled her down to him and kissed her wildly, his lips devouring her own with the ferocity of an animal. The coppery taste of her blood filled her mouth as James pushed his tongue inside. His cold hands snaked up to her hair and began to grab fistfuls of it, pulling harder and harder as he groaned into her mouth.

“Take me in your mouth, my darling,”

James moaned as he pulled back from her, pushing her back.

“I need to feel your warmth.”

Eleanor slipped back down between James’s legs, and the evidence of his unnatural arousal was before her. His erection was thick and stiff but pale. His cock throbbed and jerked as James took it in one hand and grabbed Eleanor by the throat with the other and pulled her closer to it.

“Take me in your mouth, Eleanor. Let me feel your mouth's sweet, warm wetness once more.”

Eleanor gazed down in a lustful haze at the visage of the man she had loved so much. Whatever repulsion she might have felt faded as she saw the sweet and gentle man he had been, still somewhere within the ravaged corpse before her.

“Yes, my love, anything you desire.”

Eleanor smiled down at him, completely entranced now, seeing only her golden-haired lover lying beneath the branches of that oak tree where they had first made love that summer afternoon.

Eleanor bent forward and took the icy head of his cock into her mouth. It slipped between her soft lips, and James gave a rasping cry. His rock-hard cock was smooth and cold and slipped so easily between her lips. Her tongue ran up and down the shaft, and she thought only of the pleasure she was bringing him.

James clenched her hair in his fists and began to pump himself in and out of her mouth using those handfuls of hair as leverage. Eleanor felt his cock hit the back of her throat and she tried to pull back, but James held her firm, not allowing her to retreat. He bucked his hips upward forcing as much of his cock into her mouth as he could. Tears streamed down Eleanor’s face as she tried desperately not to gag as the hard cock rammed into her throat again and again with a ferocity she had never known from James. For a moment he even seemed to revel in her discomfort for she could hear a strange laugh coming from him now as he again and again pumped his cock in and out of mouth.

Finally, when she felt she could stand no more, James relented and released her. Eleanor pulled back and gazed at him. Her eyes glazed with the unnatural desire that filled the room, and she knew she would offer him any part of herself. She was his to use, to take, to claim.

“I need to be inside you, my darling,”

James moaned as his hands snaked around her neck and began to squeeze the air from her lungs.

“Yes, James!”

Eleanor let out a strangled cry as the grip on her throat tightened. She wanted to be entirely devoured by him until there was nothing left. She had given herself up completely, and the only thing that mattered now was this moment, this union with James.

Eleanor lifted herself and straddled him, positioning James’s still rock-hard cock at her entrance.

“Fill me, James. Fill me up and become one with me.”

Eleanor could feel her arousal slipping out of her and down her thighs as the head of the cock slipped inside of her. The intense cold was like being speared with ice, hot and cold at once. Eleanor moaned loudly and began to move her hips rhythmically as she took more and more of him inside her until the burning, icy shaft was buried entirely within her wet heat.

James groaned, grabbing her hips with rough, bruising fingers, but Eleanor didn’t care. She didn’t care what happened to her at this point. All she cared about was this union, this needs to become one to release their shared passion. She began to ride him, her hands roaming over the cold plains of his pale chest as she found the right spot to bring her the most pleasure.

The room was dead silent as the others watched this unnatural union with a lustful awe and horrible fascination. But then Eleanor felt James’s tense below her, and she knew he was close to releasing himself inside her. Using her hand, she found her sweet spot and began to rub herself, her breath coming in quick pants. The orgasm washed over both of them together as if they shared one mind and body. It was more potent than anything she had ever felt. Her muscles contracted so powerfully that it almost caused pain, and both of them screamed out in a way that sounded like a perfect blend of pleasure and torment. Eleanor felt a flood of icy cold fill her, wave after wave, and she realized it was James’s seed. He was coming inside of her, but whereas once it had warmed her insides so sweetly, it now made her shiver from the cold that she thought might never leave her.

“Stay with me,”

she whispered, tears streaking her face.

“Don’t leave me again.”

James’s gaze locked onto hers, a flicker of humanity shimmering beneath the feral hunger.

“I’ll stay,”

he rasped, his voice trembling with a chilling finality. “Forever.”

Suddenly, the galvanic apparatus erupted in a blinding flare, arcs of electricity snapping violently and bathing the room in chaotic light. Then, all at once, the blaze vanished into suffocating darkness. James collapsed against Eleanor, his body convulsing as life clawed its way back into him.

The silence that followed was deafening. Staff members stood frozen, their faces etched with shock and something darker, anticipation, perhaps fear.

Eleanor cradled James in trembling arms, her tears streaking onto his lifeless, clammy skin. She had done the impossible. She had brought him back. But as her eyes searched his, she saw only a shadow, a faint, distorted remnant of the man she once loved. He was alive, but the hunger within him was devouring what remained.

A sickening realization flooded her; there was no undoing what she had unleashed. James belonged to her, but so too did the darkness he carried.

The room seemed to close in, and every face watched her like vultures circling prey. Marian stepped forward, her face tense, her hand extended as if to offer solace or something else entirely.

Eleanor knew she had reached the edge. And beyond it lay madness.

I hardly recognize myself anymore. I did things I once thought unimaginable tonight, which should have filled me with shame, yet I felt none. Instead, I craved it. Every debased act, every humiliating moment under their watchful eyes, was something I wanted. No, something I needed. It terrifies me to admit how much I enjoyed it.

What has become of me? Is this who I truly am, or has that wretched pendant Blackwood gave me hollowed me out and replaced me with someone or something else?

And James… my James. I’ve brought him back to this world, but at what cost? His presence is both my salvation and my damnation. When he looked at me with that flicker of humanity, I felt love and an unspeakable hunger mirrored in my own. Was it his hunger? Or mine? I can no longer tell.

This may be what Blackwood intended all along. He thinks he owns me now, that he has stripped me of my will and bent me to his purpose. But he’s wrong. I may have submitted to his ritual, but I will not be his pawn forever. I’ll endure whatever degradation is necessary to see James fully restored. And then… then I will make Blackwood regret ever underestimating me.

But for now, I feel trapped between what I’ve become and what I fear losing. James, my love, my soul. I’ve tied myself to him, and there’s no cutting that thread now. God help me; I don’t know if I even want to.