Page 27 of The Flesh Remembers

The stillness of morning did not last. The scent of wilted blossoms and sweat lingered in the air, the memory of unrestrained ecstasy still imprinted upon the ground. But as the golden glow of dawn stretched across the clinic’s ruined gardens, an intrusion disrupted the uneasy peace.

City officials arrived in force, uniformed officers accompanied by men and women in long coats, their expressions a mixture of scepticism and barely contained revulsion. They had heard the rumours: whispers of impossible flora, of bodies entwined in unnatural rapture, of the fevered aftermath of an orgiastic rite that had shattered the limits of human pleasure and pain. What they found was worse than anything they could have imagined.

The survivors of the night’s ceremony still wandered through the overgrown ruins, their eyes unfocused, their bodies trembling with the aftershocks of the ritual’s lingering grip. Some curled into each other, unable or unwilling to part, their limbs entwined with what remained of the sentient vines. Others lay on the ground, murmuring incoherent prayers, their skin still glowing faintly with the traces of necromantic pleasure. Some watched the newcomers with languid, knowing smiles, their lips still parted in moans, their fingers lazily exploring their transformed bodies as if unable to stop indulging in their newfound hunger.

The officers hesitated, uncertain whether they had stepped into a scene of devastation or divinity. The air itself was charged, thick with something unspeakable, and despite their training, some felt an undeniable pull, a whispering promise of sensation beyond mortal comprehension.

Then one of the cultists stepped forward.

She was beautiful in a way that defied nature, her skin luminescent, her breath slow and measured. She smiled, a dreamy, sultry thing, as she approached the nearest official. "You don’t need to fight it," she whispered, her voice curling around his resistance like one of the creeping vines. "You’ve come this far. Why not taste it?"

He staggered back, but others were not as strong. Some officers found themselves drawn toward the remaining cultists, their gazes growing distant, their bodies leaning forward, caught between duty and the raw, overwhelming hunger still thrumming in the air. One woman let out a soft gasp as a cultist traced a finger down her arm, the touch igniting something deep within her. Another officer trembled, his jaw slackening, his pupils dilating as a whisper of phantom pleasure coiled through his spine. A groan escaped one of them, low and shuddering, as though something had slipped beneath their skin and rewired their nerves for pleasure alone.

James watched from the ruins of the clinic, his luminescent veins pulsing subtly beneath his skin. He did not move to interfere. He did not need to. The cult’s power had not entirely waned, and those who had witnessed the ceremony, even from the periphery, were now marked, tainted by the echoes of its rapture.

Eleanor stood beside him; her expression twisted with guilt and undeniable yearning. She could not ignore the truth of what they had done, what she had helped to create. Her hands clenched into fists, her nails biting into her palms. "They’re going to kill us, James. Or worse."

James turned to her, his smile lazy, knowing. "Not yet."

She felt his weight, the way his presence curled around her like an unseen force. Even in the face of impending disaster, she could not shake his gravitational pull over her. James traced a slow, deliberate touch down the curve of her spine, his fingers leaving a trail of tingling warmth in their wake. A single touch, and she felt the ache blossom between her thighs, a whisper of the night before igniting deep inside her.

"I can’t keep doing this," she whispered, her voice cracking. "I can’t"

James reached for her, his hand sliding to her throat, cradling it with the perfect balance of control and tenderness. His fingers, once merely flesh and bone, now pulsed with something deeper, something ancient. "Eleanor," he murmured, his voice low, soothing, dangerous. "You can. And you will."

A tear slipped down her cheek. She wanted to hate him. She tried to tear herself away. But the bond was too deep, the love too poisoned. And deep inside, she feared what she would be without it. This dangerous love was like a drug, and she was the addict who could not tear herself away. Though Eleanor grieved for the life she might have built with James and the joy they once knew, she shivered at the uncertainty of the future awaiting them in this unfamiliar world.

The air grew heavier. The cultists no longer just stood in place, but moved toward the officers, their bodies slow and fluid, like dancers caught in a dream. Their movements dripped with something beyond seduction, a force of nature, a law rewritten. Some officers stiffened, trying to resist, but their limbs betrayed them, their breath coming quicker, their pupils dilating.

One man gasped as his partner pressed against him, fingers gripping his collar, his lips parted in a silent plea for something he could not name. Another officer, a woman, found herself on her knees before a cultist, trembling as ghostly fingers traced her jaw, lifting her chin as if to drink in the sight of her crumbling resolve. She should fight. She should resist. But all she wanted was to feel it.

A moan escaped another officer, one who had tried to pull away but was now pressed against a cultist’s body, breathless, shaking, sinking into the helpless inevitability of it all. The vines curled at their feet, like patient lovers waiting for submission.

A sudden commotion broke their moment. An officer, one who had managed to resist the pull of the cultists, raised his revolver in the air and fired a warning shot. "Everyone, stop where you are! Now!"

Some of the surviving cultists obeyed. Still drunk on the vestiges of power, others only laughed, their bodies too lost in pleasure to register the authority’s command. The officials had not come prepared for this. They had expected madness, debauchery, something they could suppress with force. They had not expected the pull, the temptation, the sheer unnatural seduction that still radiated from the remnants of the ceremony.

One of them, a man whose hands trembled like dead leaves in the wind, turned his gaze to James. His lips cracked as he whispered, “What are you?”

James only smiled.

Something flickered beneath his skin, a ripple of movement that was not wholly human. Eleanor saw it. Felt it. A pit of unease coiled within her stomach, cold and deep. She had known, had always known, that the ceremony had changed him, that something ancient had threaded itself into his being. But here, in the thickening silence, she could see it.

The glow beneath his veins pulsed like a heartbeat, slow, deliberate, waiting.

The vines at his feet twitched.

Then, moved.

They stretched toward him, coiling like desperate hands, recognizing something in him. Something that was no longer separate, no longer bound to mortal flesh.

Their true master.

Eleanor swallowed hard. “James,”

she whispered, horror tangling with something else. Something dangerous. Something she dared not name.

He touched her, fingers gliding along her jaw, tilting her face upward. Her breath caught. His smile sharpened.

“I told you,”

he murmured, like silk over steel.

“It’s only just beginning.”

The officers shouted orders, voices cracking beneath the weight of their panic. They tried to wrest control from the chaos, but the cultists, oh, the cultists, they did not run. Some collapsed to their knees, lips moving in silent worship. Others reached for their would-be captors, their hands trembling with something not fear, but longing.

Eleanor felt the balance shatter, teetering on the edge of something inevitable.

James felt it.

The ceremony had not truly ended.

The city, the cult, the love that bound them, it was all on the brink of transformation, something darker, something far more terrible than the authorities could ever comprehend.

And James?

James welcomed it.

Excerpt from the journal of Lord Alastair Blackwood

I have retreated to my private quarters. It is not cowardice, it is necessity. I do not trust the subject.

His power swells with each passing hour, like a tide that does not recede but rises. The last shreds of his humanity slough off like dead skin, like the husk of something discarded and forgotten. What remains is not James, the man, but something vast, something unknowable.

Eleanor still stands at his side, though I see the faltering in her gaze, the brief flickers of doubt. Does she recognize the thing that now wears the form of the man she loved? The dark god we called forth, the entity that stirs beneath his skin, waiting, watching.

She loves him, undoubtedly. But love alone cannot save him.

Nor can it save us.

What have I done?

What have we brought into this world?

An Escape

The dreams began the moment Eleanor closed her eyes.

Heat. Wetness. The scent of sweat and rot clung to her skin. She stood in the ruins of the garden, vines slick with dark sap curling around her ankles, the pulsing remains of bodies still entwined in worship. Half-rotted cultists moaned, their hands reaching for her, their mouths forever open in silent cries of pleasure and agony. And James, James loomed above them all, his skin molten with power, his eyes black voids of hunger.

"Come back to me, Eleanor."

His voice slithered through her veins, tendrils of lust and desire that coiled and tightened around her limbs. She tried to recoil, but the garden would not let her. The vines pulled her forward, parting as she stumbled into James’s grasp. His hands burned as they pressed into her flesh, as though imprinting his hunger onto her body itself.

"I’ve missed you," he murmured, his lips grazing the curve of her throat. "And you’ve missed this."

She let out a sharp cry as something coiled tight inside her, a terrible, aching need that did not belong to her alone. His touch was not just physical; it unwound her, pulling her open, exposing the raw, aching core of her desire. The moans of the dying cultists surrounded them, a grotesque chorus of pleasure and decay, and still, her body arched, moaned, begged.

Even as she screamed against it.

She woke with a cry, drenched in sweat, her sheets twisted and damp beneath her. The echo of her moans lingered in the air, her thighs still wet with ruinous desire, consumed by phantom touches that had never left. The room was silent, yet she swore she could hear his laughter, feel his breath ghosting against her skin. She pressed a shaking hand to her chest, her heart hammering. It was just a dream. A dream born from the horrors of the past weeks.

But as she moved to untangle herself from the sheets, something dark shimmered on her skin. As Eleanor’s gaze dropped to her arms, the ghostly imprint of fingers lingered on her skin, faint, but unmistakable. A long, slow exhale slipped from her lips as she watched, wide-eyed, while the marks gradually dissolved, vanishing just as the remnants of her dream slipped away into the ether.

Her inner thighs were wet with more than sweat.

Eleanor had left the clinic for the first time in two months. She hadn’t planned to go. She had resigned herself to her fate and was content with dying beside James in that corrupting den of debauchery and madness. On the night the police and the city officials had come for the inspection, Eleanor had returned to her quarters to rest after they had left. In his transformed flesh, James no longer needed any sleep. Still, it seemed whatever had happened to Eleanor during the insanity of the final ritual had not made her quite as inhuman as her lover.

“Go lie down,”

James said softly, his pale hand smoothing the dark, sweat-dampened hair from her forehead. Eleanor stared up at him, and she felt her heart might break in two, for she could yet see him there—her James.

James, James, James? It is not James—not his smile, not his touch, not his skin. The machine wears his face like a mask.

Touch me, James. No, no, do not touch me.

I want more of him. I want all of him.

I must get away from him.

“James,”

Eleanor whispered, looking up into his blue eyes while her newly amber eyes filled with tears. James looked down at her, his hands caressing her cheeks, and then with a slight shudder, she saw the clear light of love fade from his eyes, and instead, there was him. The new god, James. Alive yet dead and filled with this new power. His smile was knowing, seductive, but also terrifying.

“Yes,”

Eleanor said softly, “I think I will go and lie down. I am quite exhausted.”

Eleanor pulled away from James as gently as she could and pulled her robe tighter about her bruised and welted flesh. She could feel James’s eyes upon her as she turned and walked quickly back to where part of the clinic was still intact. The main living quarters were still mostly habitable, and she found her room easily.

Eleanor had only meant to lie down. Truly, she had not planned for anything beyond that, but within two minutes of entering the room, she grabbed the small bag she had brought and began emptying her clothes and toiletries into the bag. She didn’t know what she was doing and knew she would stop if she paused to consider what she was doing or the danger. So she didn’t pause, she just moved with as much speed as possible while trying to remain as quiet as possible. There wasn’t any staff now to speak of, so the hallways were empty as she moved swiftly around the corners and down the stairs. She knew that if James found her trying to leave, he would be very displeased and possibly punish her. But she could no longer stay and watch what her love was turning into. It was destroying her. Eleanor attempted to remove the pendant from her neck to leave it behind. However, when she touched the disk, it burned white hot in her fingers. It would not let her go without it. Not wanting to take any more time, she left it where it was, feeling the metal cool down as she hurried down the corridor.

Eleanor went home. After she successfully left the clinic and made it down Allen Street, she hailed a carriage in front of a somewhat respectable-looking hotel and had the driver take her back to her townhouse on the other side of the city. Eleanor had sent the servants away on an extended vacation as she had no idea how long she would be occupied with bringing James back, so the house was cold and dark when she arrived. Eleanor paid the cab with the last bit of money she had left, opened the metal gate, and walked up the flagstone path to the front door. The front garden was overgrown but not too wild, for someone did come by every third week to do basic maintenance.

Once inside, after she had closed and locked the door, Eleanor collapsed in the front foyer and began to sob. Eleanor cried in such a way that she had not done since the death of James or even her father so many years ago. The thought of her dear father and how disappointed he would be with the choices she had made in life only made the pain in her chest even greater as she curled up on the dusty oriental rug and covered her head in her hands and let all the pain and grief spill out of her like a river once the dam had broken.

No matter how worried she was about James or even Blackwood or one of the other cultists showing up on her doorstep, Eleanor could not stop living, though she may have wanted to at times. She forced herself to return to some semblance of normality, though such a thing seemed quite impossible after all she had seen and experienced. Eleanor had almost convinced herself that the past two months had been some sort of fever dream and none had been real. Nearly, except the dreams would not let her.

Eleanor threw herself into the mundane, anything to drown out the lingering pulse of the dreams that would plague her nightly. She scrubbed floors, sorted through old books, and ran errands that should have made her feel human again. But the world twisted beneath her fingertips, warping under the weight of what had been done.

The walls whispered when she passed. Soft, murmuring voices brushing against her ears.

"Come back."

"We need you."

"James waits."

She gritted her teeth and pressed forward, ignoring the shadows that flickered where they shouldn't, the scent of iron curling in the air like an old lover’s breath. She refused to acknowledge the wet footprints behind her, dark and glistening against the wooden floor.

She stumbled when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Her reflection did not blink.

And James stood behind her.

She whirled, her heart hammering, but the room was empty. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and her hands clutched the furniture for support. Her reflection still did not move.

"Get out of my head," she whispered.

A chuckle, low and knowing, reverberated through the room. "Oh, Eleanor, you can’t be rid of me that easily."

She found him waiting in the crypt beneath the old church ruins, where the air was thick with damp stone and the lingering scent of burnt incense. He stood in the flickering candlelight, watching her with that same lazy, unreadable gaze that always made her stomach lurch with equal parts fear and longing.

"You’re unravelling," he said, voice smooth, mocking. "You feel it, don’t you? The pull of what we started."

Eleanor crossed her arms, masking the tremor in her fingers. "I feel nothing."

James tilted his head, amusement flickering in his glowing blue eyes. "Then why are you here?" He stepped closer, his presence suffocating, a tide she could never escape. "You can’t run from me, Eleanor. You never could. And now," he reached out, fingers brushing against her pulse point, making her shudder, "I need more."

A terrible truth unfolded between them. James was changing. The hunger in his gaze was no longer just desire, it was survival. He wasn’t just asking.

He was demanding.

And she would give it.

Because she had no choice.

Her back hit the cold stone as he caged her in, his breath hot against her neck. His weight pinned her, the sheer force of his presence unravelling her resistance.

"Say it," he murmured, lips grazing her ear. "Tell me what you need."

She clenched her jaw, shaking her head.

He grabbed her wrist, guiding her palm to his chest, where something inside him pulsed, something inhuman. The heat of it surged up her arm, igniting a familiar pang between her thighs. The connection burned, and suddenly, she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began.

"Say it, Eleanor. Or I’ll take it anyway."

Her lips parted, a whisper slipping free before she could stop it.

"You."

Then his mouth was on hers, brutal, consuming. Eleanor’s nails raked down his back, the bite of pleasure laced with something darker, something that bound her even tighter to the monster he had become. Her mind screamed, but her body yielded, burning for him, desperate for the only release he could give her.

He swallowed every sound she made, every last flicker of resistance, until she was nothing but trembling limbs and shattered breath, lost in him, lost in the darkness.

And she knew this was not love.

This was possession.

Eleanor jolted awake, her body slick with sweat, the damp fabric clinging to her skin. Her pulse thundered in her ears as she whispered the same reassurance repeatedly; it was just a dream. But the words rang hollow when she turned to the mirror, where the unmistakable impressions of bite marks bloomed angrily across her breasts, stark against the dim light.

The letter arrived that night, silent, impossible.

Eleanor had locked her door, and no one had entered. Yet, it sat on her bedside table, waiting.

The parchment was aged; its edges curled like something unearthed from a grave. Deep crimson ink smelled faintly metallic, like rust, like blood. She knew the seal before she even touched it.

Lord Blackwood. The architect of their descent.

Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the letter, the paper brittle beneath her touch.

My dearest child,

Did you genuinely believe it was over? Did you think you could slip away, untouched?

The garden may wither, but the roots remain.

James is only the beginning.

And so are you.

The world is not yet ready for what we have birthed.

But it will be.

The wax seal throbbed beneath her fingertips. A heartbeat. A promise. A warning.

Something pressed against the edges of her mind, familiar, terrible. She was not alone.

Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Eleanor Ashcroft

I ran from him. I fled like a thief, slipping into the night without thought, without plan only instinct, only desperation.

But now that I am alone, I can’t recall when the decision was truly made. Did I choose to leave, or did something force me to flee?

The thought churns inside me. Did I really believe I could return to my old life? That, after all I have seen and done, I could simply step back into the ordinary, slip into the skin of the woman I was before?

I am not her anymore. I know that.

And yet, I linger. I hover between realities; caught between the life I abandoned and the one waiting for me if I return.

I cannot stop thinking about him.

James. The clinic. The garden that should not exist but does.

Each morning, I swear I will not return.

And each night, I feel him pulling me back.

He is behind me. Always behind me. A shadow at the edges of my sight, a presence I cannot shake. I feel him watching.

Waiting.

I know he wants me to return. His voice is silent, but it threads into my bones. He calls to me without words, and my body listens.

I want to go.

I want to give in.

I want to let it take me.

But I fear what waits beyond that threshold, what I will become if I step forward.

I do not want to lose all of myself.

But perhaps I already have.