Page 26 of The Flesh Remembers

The air pulsed with humid heat, thick with the scent of overripe fruit and something darker, intoxicating, irresistible.

Under the apparatus’s relentless hum, the ground split in slow, shuddering contractions, birthing tangled roots and pulsing tendrils that slithered into the air, unfurling like waking serpents.

Vines thick as limbs groped outward, their slick surfaces beaded with a syrupy sap that gleamed under the bioluminescent glow of fungal blooms.

The cultists moved as one, their bodies weaving through the writhing growths, their fingers dipping into the oozing nectar.

As the first drops touched their lips, a collective shiver of ecstasy rippled through them.

They moaned, soft at first, then rising in urgency, their hunger mirrored by the ravenous bloom of the garden.

The air grew heavier, charged with the static of something ancient, something watching, waiting.

Eleanor turned to James, her legs unsteady, her pupils swallowed by lust and reverence.

“It’s happening,”

she murmured, tracing her fingers over the vines.

“The final threshold.”

James exhaled slowly, watching the volunteers move deeper into the living Eden.

They came willingly, their hands trembling as they took the ceremonial blades, pressing the edges into their palms.

Crimson droplets welled, sliding over their skin before they smeared them onto the vines.

The reaction was immediate, the plant matter shuddering, drinking in the sacrifice, then splitting open in obscene, fleshy blossoms.

Petals slick with moisture unfurled, exhaling a pheromonal mist that slithered into lungs, minds, and the fragile border between self and other.

A low, resonant moan echoed through the chamber, not from any one mouth, but from the garden itself.

The walls exhaled, their membranous surfaces swelling and contracting as though in the throes of some primal pleasure.

The ritual was no longer a ceremony but a desecration, a baptism in flesh and hunger.

A feral, untamed world of beauty and pain was seeping into this world bit by bit.

Their ceremony had opened a door of sorts, and whatever was on the other side wanted to taste the pleasures of our world in any way possible.

James turned to Eleanor, and she was already reaching for him.

The garden pulsed around them, vines undulating, their sap now thick with the mingling blood and sweat of the willing.

They sank into the embrace of the living tendrils, which coiled around their limbs, guiding their bodies together.

Each touch sent waves of sensation rippling through the garden, the pleasure reverberating outward, feeding the monstrous fertility of the realm.

James ran his hands over Eleanor’s body, feeling the vines shiver against her skin, as if they, too, hungered for her.

The tendrils wrapped tighter, whispering obscene invitations, slithering across bare flesh, slick with sap and sweat.

They pressed into the secret places of bodies, filling, stroking, consuming, teasing pleasure from them in impossible ways.

The garden did not simply take.

It worshipped.

It pulled confessions from their bodies, desires so buried they had never dared to speak them aloud.

The vines licked, kissed, and twisted around trembling limbs, forcing gasps, moans, and shuddering cries.

The cultists convulsed, lost in an ocean of sensation that obliterated thought, reducing them to pure, writhing need.

The vines became lovers, insatiable and knowing, responding to each moan, each quivering breath with teasing strokes that brought them all to the brink, then denied them release, holding them there, thrashing, gasping, pleading for the next wave.

Eleanor’s fingers clutched at James’s back, her body arching as the tendrils wound tighter, her voice raw with desire. “Please…”

she breathed, lost between pain and pleasure, lost between surrender and something far darker.

James kissed her deeply, tasting the sweet nectar of the garden on her lips, their movements desperate now, animalistic, synchronized with the slow, undulating pulse of the vines surrounding them.

The garden would not let them climax too soon it would drag it out, make them beg, make them dissolve into it.

A sacrifice beyond blood was demanded.

The garden pulsed hungrily, its roots probing deeper into the flesh of its worshippers, claiming them cell by cell.

Some resisted, only momentarily, before the vines wrenched their mouths open, pouring nectar down their throats, forcing them to drink their surrender.

One of the initiates, a woman whose lips were still trembling with half-formed protest, let out a strangled cry as the vines burrowed into her skin, knitting into the fabric of her being.

Her form quivered, stretched, and then, with a wet, gurgling sigh, she was gone, transformed into a blooming effigy of pleasure and agony, her moans forever part of the garden’s chorus.

James watched, entranced, as Eleanor trembled beneath him, her breath in shallow gasps.

“It’s...

consuming us,”

she whispered, her fingers tightening in his hair.

His lips brushed her ear.

“Then let it.”

The vines had a vice-like grip on Eleanor, forcing her to submit to their will.

A separate coiling vine snaked its way around each wrist and each ankle, holding her spread-eagled, and another slipped tenderly around her pale throat and squeezed ever so gently.

A mild sense of shock passed through her as she realized what was happening to her, but this shock was all too brief and fleeting, replaced with a strange feeling of acceptance and desire.

Yes, this is what she wanted, what she needed.

The world around her had fallen into madness, and perhaps she too was mad now, but none of that mattered in that moment.

Her mind could only think now of her release and the next wave of ecstasy.

More vines slithered around her now and began to roam her nude body.

Small round bumps appeared on some of the vines, and as they grew and stretched, strange suction-like protrusions started to burst forth from these little nodules.

Like tiny alien mouths, the protuberances began opening and closing as they moved across Eleanor’s skin.

She could feel the pull from these tiny mouths, and though logically, the whole thing repulsed her and she knew she should pull away and flee, she did not.

Instead, she closed her eyes and moaned as the seeking mouths found her hardened nipples and began to suck harder and harder, creating a unified rhythm.

These vines seemed to know exactly what to do to Eleanor to bring her closer and closer to the edge of orgasm.

As she cried out in undeniable pleasure, another vine slipped up from behind her head, and the rounded tip of it slipped into her open mouth.

The vine began to pulsate gently as it moved in and out of her mouth, holding a steady rhythm.

Eleanor moaned against the fleshy stalk of the vine, feeling it shudder against her tongue as it pushed its way deeper into her mouth towards the back of her throat.

At the exact moment, another vine slipped up between Eleanor’s legs and with delicate tendrils began to open the swollen lips of her womanhood.

With surprising deftness, the tendrils spread her open and another tendril slipped out and found that swollen centre of her pleasure and one of the tiny suction cups slipped over the throbbing spot and began to suck, gentle at first but then increasingly harder and more demanding.

Eleanor was lost in a sea of exquisite sensations, unable to do anything but feel and experience what was happening moment to moment.

A final vine slithered around Eleanor’s leg and around her backside, slipping without any warning between the firm, round globes of her flesh and up to that last bastion of erotic pleasure.

The vine tip had a long, tapered end, secreting that same nectar, lubricating the puckered hole before it gently began to push inside her.

Eleanor tried to gasp, tried to cry out, but her mouth was still filled, and so all she could do was moan against the flesh of the vine and let the final penetration happen.

James looked up to behold Eleanor in all of her unnatural erotic glory.

The vines raised her higher so everyone could watch as they used her.

Every part of her was being penetrated now by this strange living vine, and the rhythm of each vine as it moved in and out of her began to sync as Eleanor could only silently beg for release, the pleasure becoming almost unbearable.

The vines wrapped around James, lifting him towards Eleanor, suspending him beside her.

One of the suction cups began to form on the vine, but this one was larger, more alien-looking looking with strange folds that leaked more of the golden nectar.

Jame cried out as the wet hole enveloped his stiff member and began sucking him in earnest.

The sensation was unnatural, almost painful in its power, but more intensely pleasurable than anything James had ever experienced.

As James closed his eyes and allowed the vines to continue to roam his body, he too felt the vines snake up his leg and push into his backside, slick with nectar.

One of the vines penetrated him as well.

James moaned as the vine began to thrust, gently at first but quickly picking up speed, bringing him closer and closer to the edge of his release.

James and Eleanor were now entirely lost in a sea of erotic sensations, not aware of anything around them, even one another.

The vines began to slowly bring the two of them closer and closer together until their bodies pressed tightly together, the vines wrapping around the two of them, locking them into this unnatural embrace.

The others' movements became more frenzied, no longer just passion but devotion, an act of worship that stripped them of everything but sensation.

The vines responded, tightening, stroking, teasing every nerve, drawing out pleasure until it became unbearable.

The garden did not allow release; it dragged them to the brink, held them there, and let them drown in it.

James felt himself slipping, his body no longer entirely his own, overtaken by the waves of euphoria cresting higher, higher, never breaking, never subsiding, just expanding until his mind fractured beneath the weight of it.

The vines shuddered in unison, a quaking climax that rattled through the temple of flesh and flora, the walls contracting as if the entire space were one great, convulsing organ.

A violent rapture seized them all.

The air thickened, viscous, heavy with the scent of sweat and floral decay.

Limbs twisted, fused, melted into the pulsing mass, cries turning guttural, beyond words, beyond language.

It was no longer an orgasm, it was an extinction, a dissolution of self into the primal rhythm of the garden’s endless hunger.

The first bodies burst open like overripe fruit, sap and blood indistinguishable from new blooms erupted from what had once been flesh.

Eleanor’s head tilted back, a final moan spilling from her lips as vines curled into her mouth and down her throat.

Her body twitched in bliss even as she became part of something older, something infinite.

James could only watch and feel, lost in the tide, drowning in the heat, the wetness, the monstrous ecstasy that had no peak, no end, only more, and more, and more.

From the quivering flesh-petals of the garden, something convulsed, shadows coalescing into humanoid shapes, their forms writhing as if reborn from agony and ecstasy alike.

Faces emerged, eerily familiar yet grotesquely remade, stretched too wide, their flesh threaded with veined petals pulsing like breathing.

They were the lost, the consumed, reshaped into something neither human nor wholly plant, their lips trembling as silent cries spiralled through the humid air.

The cultists who had yet to succumb watched in paralyzed awe, horror seeping into their bones as the reborn figures dragged themselves forward.

Their movements were sluggish, weighted by the thick, pulsing vines that trailed behind them like grotesque umbilical cords, each glistening with nectar and the remnants of blood.

Their fingers flexed in eerie invitation, slick with the ruin of those who had gone before, their bodies quivering with something beyond pleasure, beyond pain, an existence without limit or mercy.

James felt it then, felt the inevitability crawl inside him like a parasite burrowing through his veins.

Beyond this consuming embrace, there would be no escape, no self, no individuality.

He and Eleanor would dissolve into something vast, something holy in its monstrosity, something infinite in its hunger.

had bloomed, and all would be devoured.

Excerpt from the journal of Lord Alastair Blackwood

I fear I am losing control. Fairfax’s machine heightened the power we conjured with the rituals to such a degree that I fear we have conjured something far beyond raising the dead. Whatever we have tapped into is far darker and far more ancient.

The world is trembling on the blade's edge, and these two seem to be at the centre of the chaos. I need to harness their chaos, tame it so it submits to my will. That is the only way to prevent complete destruction. I only hope that I have not lost all control.

I must redouble my efforts and remind them they would have nothing without me. They should both be on their knees, thanking me for what I gave them. They will be forced to their knees before I am done with them.

The Blooms of Human Offerings

The first light of dawn cut through the dissipating mist, its golden hue tainted by the lingering scent of nectar, sweat, and something unnameable.

The garden, once a writhing, fevered mass of desire and delirium, had fallen into eerie stillness.

Tendrils drooped, their hunger momentarily sated, while the enormous, heavy blooms sagged, their petals still slick with the remnants of a human offering.

Some cultists lay among them, half-entwined, their bodies twitching in pleasure or horror, their minds caught in the aftershocks of a night that had unravelled the boundaries of flesh and consciousness.

James stirred, the weight of something more than exhaustion pressing against his skin.

As he sat up, the world swayed, the subtle luminescence beneath his flesh flickering in response to his shifting thoughts.

His hands, stronger and unfamiliar, trembled as he traced the veins now dark with something richer than blood.

His breath came slowly and deliberately as he looked upon Eleanor beside him.

She lay against the wilted vines, her skin marked with the same otherworldly veins, glowing faintly beneath the thin sheen of sweat and sap.

Her chest rose and fell in steady breaths, though her lips parted as if caught in a whisper of a dream.

James reached out, fingers brushing her cheek.

She stirred, her eyes fluttering open, the pupils still too wide, still lost in the afterglow of something beyond pleasure, beyond pain.

Eleanor exhaled, a quiet laugh escaping her lips.

"We survived."

James didn’t answer immediately. His gaze travelled over the remnants of the cult, some still writhing weakly against the vines, others aimlessly wandering, their expressions vacillating between bliss and incomprehension. A few had regained enough self-awareness to crawl away from the ruin of the ceremony, shivering in the cool morning air. And then some had changed too much to leave, their bodies too fused, too altered to ever return to what they had been.

He turned back to Eleanor, searching her face for some reflection of his disjointed reality. "What now?" His voice was rough, thick with something he couldn't name.

She reached up, her fingers tracing the faint glow beneath his skin, as if trying to memorize his new shape. "You still feel like you," she murmured. "Do I?"

James didn't answer. Instead, he leaned down, pressing his lips against hers. The taste of nectar lingered on her tongue, thick and intoxicating, the remnants of the night’s ecstasy still clinging to them both. Eleanor moaned into his mouth, the sound vibrating through him, stirring something deeper, darker.

Her body shifted beneath him, limbs tangling, skin slick against his. The vines had left their mark, not just upon their flesh but in how they moved and responded to each other with a hunger that had no end. James traced the glowing lines on her skin, his touch sending ripples of pleasure through her, making her gasp, making her arch against him, desperate for more.

The garden pulsed around them, as if awakening again, responding to the lingering passion between them. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and sex, with the distant moans of those still lost in pleasure. Eleanor dragged her nails down James’s back, her breath hot against his neck.

"We can't stop, can we?" she whispered, her voice laced with something sinful.

James smirked, his grip tightening on her hips. "No."

He kissed her again, deeper this time, tasting the night on her, tasting the garden in her. Their bodies moved in perfect rhythm, the remnants of their humanity slipping further away with each thrust, each moan, each whispered plea. The vines trembled, reacting to their pleasure, shivering as though jealous and desperate to reclaim them.

And perhaps they already had.

A sharp cry shattered the silence, raw and jagged. A figure lurched from the garden’s edge, a woman, trembling violently, her arms clawing at her flesh as if she could tear away what had already claimed her. Her mouth hung open in a soundless scream, her throat too choked with the writhing remnants of vines still threaded beneath her skin. Veins pulsed, sluggish, swollen with something no longer wholly hers.

The others turned to watch, their expressions fractured. Some recoiled in horror, others leaning forward with something closer to reverence. Hollow eyes, empty hands, lips parted in quiet awe.

James pulled away from Eleanor, the ghost of warmth still curling at the edges of his nerves, a sickly aftertaste of pleasure warring with the fractured reality before him. The cult, He tried to speak, but the words disintegrated on his tongue.

Eleanor nodded, gaze flickering toward the shifting bodies at the far end of the clearing.

“Some will run. Some will try to forget. But others…”

James followed her stare. A cluster had gathered, their whispers rising in hushed, fervent tones. Their fingers trembled as they reached toward the ruins of the garden, the still-quivering blooms, and the remnants of bodies that had not yet been fully claimed.

A new kind of worship was forming.

James swallowed, the weight of his transformation pressing deeper, carving into his bones. The night had not ended with the garden’s final cry; it had birthed something far worse—something that would never, could never, be undone.

He turned to Eleanor and felt fear coil in his stomach for the first time. She was watching, her expression unreadable—not fear, not acceptance, but something else.

“This isn’t over,”

he murmured.

Her fingers tightened around his wrist, her smile slow, knowing.

“No. It’s only just begun.”

The Garden of Flesh was not finished.

Eleanor caught her reflection in a pool of water tinged with blood nestled within the yawning trumpet-shaped blossoms. She blinked and touched her face, waiting for recognition to settle. The woman she saw bore little resemblance to the one she had been yesterday.

Her eyes, once dark as her hair, were now a luminous, haunting shade of amber, glowing like her veins, pulsing with some unnatural inner light.

The morning light stretched over the wreckage, casting everything in sickly gold. An uneasy hush crept through the air, thick with the echoes of what had transpired.

In the distance, voices stirred, some whispering of dissolution, others of rebirth.

But here, standing in the wreckage of their creation, James and Eleanor stood on the precipice.

Of something more terrible.

Or something far more wondrous

Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Eleanor Ashcroft

How can I even begin to describe what has happened? The world I knew is ending, unravelling thread by thread, replaced by something wretched and divine. Death, chaos, rebirth, they are all the same now.

I have seen and felt things that defy reason and should not exist. And yet, they do. And I exist within them. It was my selfishness, wasn’t it? My refusal to accept James’s death, my inability to let go. Had I simply mourned as any sane woman would, perhaps this horror, this bliss, would never have found me.

Would he have rested? Would I?

The Garden of Flesh clings to me still. I taste it, the sickly sweetness lingering on my tongue, and feel the phantom weight of the vines pressing against me, into me. It is obscene, unholy, and rapturous. I yield to them, surrender without hesitation, without shame. James is here. He understands. He speaks to them, and they answer.

That should frighten me.

It does frighten me.

And yet, I crave it.

I crave the certainty, the surrender, the promise of becoming more, something vast, something eternal. What human grief can compare to this? What earthly sorrow can hold against the rapture of belonging to something without end?

But I fear what lies ahead.

I fear what I have already become.

God help me, if He still listens.