Page 29 of The Flesh Remembers

I have seen into infinity.

It is vast and incomprehensible, a churning, endless expanse where time unravels and existence is but a flicker in the dark. I stare into it with awe, terror, and devotion. It calls, and I cannot refuse.

I am dissolving. A whisper carried across the abyss, fragile, fleeting, consumed. Unmaking, remaking. I should fear it, but I do not.

Because he is with me.

James.

His presence anchors me even as I fall. His voice hums through the void and wraps around me like gravity. We are no longer bound by flesh, mortality, or the rules of a world that no longer matters.

We are woven into eternity, entwined beyond time, thought, and even ourselves.

I feel him, his pulse merging with mine, his breath dissolving into the abyss that stretches before us. We step forward.

We are unending.

We are eternal.

We are United.

One Eternal, Insatiable Hunger

The church no longer stood. It had breathed its last, exhaling a final shuddering moan as its walls melted, its ceiling stretched into infinity, its foundations swallowed by the abyss. The sacred structure had become something else entirely: a place of skin and breath, worship and ruin, bodies and whispers. The stone had softened, pulsing as though alive, as though the very fabric of existence had been transformed into something intimate, something obscene.

Above them, the sky ripped apart, exposing something that had never been meant to be seen, something vast, watching, waiting. The air was thick, not with fear or dread, but with pleasure. The scent of sweat, sex, and the incense of something more sacred than holiness itself wrapped around Eleanor, intoxicating, heavy, sinking into her pores, into her tongue, filling her lungs with something richer than air.

The apparatus hummed, moaned, and pulsated beneath her touch. It was no longer just a machine, no longer just a device of power. It had become something organic, raw, and uncontainable. The sigils carved into its shifting, breathing surface glowed in feverish ecstasy, slithering across its form, searing themselves into the skin of those who dared to press against it. It was not just consuming them. It was worshiping them.

And the faithful worshiped back.

Bodies writhed in a final, sacred rhythm. The worshipers, once individuals, had become one mass of heaving, gasping, devoted flesh. Their cries rose in a chorus, their mouths spilling hymns in a language of panting breaths and desperate moans. This was no longer a mere ritual of indulgence. It was something greater, a communion of lust and transcendence, an obliteration of self into the whole.

Some had already ceased to be human.

Their spines arched unnaturally, their flesh stretched into new shapes, their hands became grasping tendrils, seeking, wanting, devouring. Their moans melted together, no longer separate voices but one unified cry, one final song of devotion. They were becoming part of the church itself.

The walls, once mere architecture, shivered at their touch.

Long since shattered, the stained-glass windows had left behind only gaping mouths, whispering, begging to be filled.

The altar, oh, the altar had changed.

What had once been cold, dead stone was now soft, wet, and inviting. It was a living thing, throbbing, pulsating, swelling in anticipation. It was no longer a place of sacrifice. It was a lover.

And tonight, it would take everything.

James stood before her, or perhaps, he towered. He was no longer just a man. No longer a revenant, a ghost of the past, a creature caught between life and death. No, he had become something much more.

His body moved without moving, his limbs shifting, stretching, twisting in the flickering light, no longer constrained by mortal form. His skin had turned to something luminous and dark at once, a figure of pure need and impossible beauty. He was a storm of shadow and light, yet his hands were warm when they reached for her.

He was limitless. But he was not whole. Not yet. Not until Eleanor made her choice.

He cupped her face, tilting her chin upward. His touch was a brand, his voice a whisper of gentle fire.

“Eleanor.”

His voice pressed into her ribs, curled beneath her skin, filling the spaces between her thoughts. She felt it in the pulse between her thighs, in the tightening of her breath, in the surrender that had already begun before she could even answer.

“One more sacrifice, my love,”

James said softly, raising the dagger.

“Your blood. We need your blood.”

James took her hand and dragged the blade of the dagger across her delicate flesh. The pain was so much more than pain in any normal sense. It was life, death, the cause, and the cure. Eleanor cried out as the blood ran down her fingers and into the earth at her feet.

Memories began to flood her of all the times that voice had called to her in greeting, whispered to her in love, cried out to her in passion.

El, seeing your face that night in the lab was the best thing that ever happened to me. I knew then that there was no one else for me but you.

Eleanor Ashcroft, you’ve fought through so much to become a doctor. You make me so proud.

Ellie, nothing in this world can ever separate us. We are always a part of each other.

“It’s time,”

James murmured, snapping Eleanor’s attention back to the present.

His fingers traced down her arms, over her waist, his touch reverent and demanding all at once.

“Will you make me a god?”

His grip tightened, pulling her closer, their bodies nearly touching, heat coiling between them, thick, unrelenting.

“Or will you keep me as your lover?”

A choice.

A lie.

They both knew James had always been inevitable.

And Eleanor had never stood a chance.

The entire world trembled.

The chant had reached its peak.

The last of the faithful were gone, their bodies now part of the church, the living altar, and the abyss itself. Their final moans still echoed, their pleasure eternal, their last moments burned into the very foundation of this new world.

Eleanor knew what she had to do.

She lifted her hands, tracing the symbols that burned across James’s shifting skin. Her breath was uneven, and her body ached with the weight of what she was about to become.

And then

She spoke the final words.

The universe convulsed.

The apparatus screamed.

James arched, shuddering, his form expanding, burning, unravelling into something too divine, monstrous, and beautiful for mortal eyes to comprehend.

Eleanor felt herself dissolve.

She felt the disk within her chest fully become one with her flesh, and she was the disk, and it was her. She could hear it as if it were a thought in her head. It promised to show her marvellous things.

She did not fall.

She did not die.

She simply became something else.

She had offered herself willingly.

And James had taken everything.

The church ceased to exist.

The abyss was no longer separate.

It was them.

James and Eleanor were no longer two beings.

They were one.

One god.

One desire.

One eternal, insatiable hunger.

And as the first moans of new worshipers rose in the distance, as the first prayers of a new, twisted faith whispered through the air, Eleanor knew.

She had made the right choice.

Because she was no longer Eleanor.

She was his.

She was divine.

And she was eternal.

James and I are one.

We always have been.

Now we always shall be.

I no longer remember who I was, only that she is gone, distant, dissolved like a whisper lost in the wind. A faded echo of something small, something fragile, something that no longer matters.

I am so much more than I once was.

I am nothing and everything.

I am endless.

I am eternal.

I am him.

And he is me.

His pulse hums within my veins. His breath is my own. His thoughts bleed into mine until there is no distinction, no separation, only our vast, consuming unity.

I do not fear it.

I do not resist.

This is not loss.

This is love.

Love beyond time, beyond flesh, beyond the constraints of a world too small to contain us.

I belong to him.

And he belongs to me.

The Body is a Monument of Devotion

The world was no longer a world.

It was a whisper of ruin and breath, sighs and silence, bodies and dust.

Once grand and terrible, the church was now only a carcass of worship, its broken walls weeping with the last echoes of the faithful. The sky above had stretched open, peeled back like the lips of a god waiting to be kissed, its mouth dark, endless, watching.

The air was still thick with the perfume of climax and devotion, the remnants of sweat, incense, and something deeper, the scent of souls that had been willingly given, of flesh that had melted into faith.

And in the quiet aftermath, only Eleanor and James remained.

They had not all died.

Some had been left behind, frozen in the throes of eternal ecstasy.

A woman lay sprawled at the foot of the ruined altar, her lips still parted, her hands still gripping at something unseen, something lost, her body locked in the moment of her final surrender. Her back arched with each breath, as though she were still offering herself, even now, to a god who no longer needed her.

A man knelt near the shattered stained glass, his arms wrapped around his own trembling body, rocking back and forth as he whispered words no human tongue had ever known. His skin was covered in sigils, written not in ink but in pleasure, pain, and rapture.

They had given themselves freely. And the ritual had kept them. Not dead but not quite alive. Just there on their knees, worshipping forever.

James stood before her, his form no longer shifting or uncertain. He was perfect now. But perfection was a terrible thing. His body still burned with the glow of something beyond mortal understanding, and his eyes still held shadows that whispered and beckoned. But beneath it all, there was hunger. Not the hunger of a man, not even the hunger of a god. The hunger of something eternal, something that had devoured existence itself and still wanted more.

And Eleanor stepped toward him anyway.

Her touch sent tremors through him. His breath faltered like a house on fragile foundations, his hands gripping her waist as if she were smoke slipping through his fingers.

“Eleanor,”

he whispered, and her name in his mouth made the world shudder.

She traced her fingers over his jaw, throat, and chest, feeling the power that thrummed beneath his skin and how he barely held himself together.

And then she did something unthinkable. She dropped to her knees before him.

James groaned, his entire body tensing, the remnants of his mortality warring with his ascended form. Gods were not worshipped like this, but she was not kneeling in submission. She was kneeling in devotion.

Her hands slid over his hips, her mouth brushing over his stomach, her lips pressing to the place where his heart had once beat. She breathed in his scent, and for one brief moment, it was just James as he had been—the clean and sweet smell of him.

“I love you,”

she murmured, and it was the only truth that had ever mattered.

James let out a shaking breath, his hands fisting in her hair, his body breaking apart and reforming beneath her touch.

He was coming undone.

And she was the one undoing him.

He pulled her into his arms, lifting her effortlessly, pressing his forehead to hers, breathing her in like he could not survive without her.

And perhaps he couldn’t.

Perhaps that was the cruellest truth of all.

They had become something more than lovers. They had become the last gods of a broken world. And now, there was nothing left to do but finish it.

James pushed her against the remnants of the altar, his lips searing against her throat, against her collarbone, against the places that he had already marked.

“You were made for me,”

he whispered, and it was not a lie. It was as if a prophecy had been fulfilled.

She gasped as his hands tore away the last barriers between them, his fingers sliding over her with something between reverence and greed. He touched her like a man who had been starved, like a god who had just discovered hunger.

Eleanor arched beneath him, offering herself, pressing closer, sighing against his lips as his body molded to hers, as the last remnants of resistance crumbled.

And then, he took her. Slowly. Beautifully. Ruinously. It was not just sex. It was now the highest form of worship. It was an ending to their story but also a beginning to another.

Every movement sent ripples through reality itself, the ruined church walls groaning, the sky above splitting further with each gasping breath, the remaining worshippers moaning in unconscious response as if still tied to the ritual, still feeling what she felt.

James buried himself inside her, his hands gripping her thighs, his breath ragged, his voice a prayer against her skin.

And Eleanor cried out, her body tightening around him, her soul unravelling, her very existence pouring into his.

There was no longer a distinction between them.

She was his.

And he was hers.

They were one.

They were everything.

They were the abyss made flesh.

Eleanor clung to James as he gently laid her onto the ground, the earth soft beneath them, the scent of spring grass filling the air around them.

For an instant, Eleanor closed her eyes, and she was back to that night in the carriage house with the rain pouring outside when she and James had first consummated their love.

The power of their union was unknowable, and if either of them had been merely human, they would not have been able to withstand it.

But both were something beyond human now, so the immense power between them engulfed them, twisting within them until they could scream as the energy poured out of them.

James and Eleanor, locked in that union of pure ecstasy, looked into each other's eyes and saw the glowing light of eternity reflected back to themselves.

As James thrust within her, the two of them became one mind, one spirit, the energy from their union reflected off their glistening bodies, lighting up the air around them stronger than any lamplight.

And when their pleasure finally crested, when the last, shattered gasp of ecstasy left her lips, the world ended.

"They're calling us."

James exhaled slowly, his fingers tightening around hers.

“Then let them pray.”

And together, they rose.

James stood before her, not the man she had loved, but also not the monster she had feared. He was something else completely now. Something perfect

Some still twitched, still moaned, still gasped in the endless throes of pleasure that had never ended. Their bodies had been rewritten by worship; their minds forever trapped in the moment of surrender.

Others had been left twisted beyond human recognition, their bodies reshaped into monuments of devotion, their bones carved into the walls, their mouths stretched open in eternal prayer.

And then some still waited. Lord Blackwood was among them. He had survived the abyss, dragged himself out of the wreckage, his body broken, his eyes hollow. Now, he stared at Eleanor, pleading, demanding.

“You don’t have to do this,”

he whispered.

“You can still stop it. You can still be saved.”

Eleanor laughed softly. Her laugh held no contempt or mockery, but his words sounded small and insignificant. They both knew there was nothing left to save.

She stepped toward James, and the ruins trembled. Lord Blackwood screamed as James stepped closer to him. His eyes seemed to be pure golden light, and they gazed in disgust at the pitiful Blackwood.

“Quiet now,”

James said softly, his arms reaching out for Blackwood, his luminescent skin glowing faintly against the darkness of their surroundings.

Blackwood was sobbing now, falling to his knees and begging for his life, for mercy. But James no longer had mercy. He was the unknowable, the eternal and endless. Mercy was a concept that had no meaning to him now.

James’s hands gripped Blackwood by the throat, and he stared intently into Blackwood’s hollowed eyes as he began to squeeze the life out of him.

Final excerpt from the journal of Lord Alastair Blackwood

The world is tearing itself apart.

I fled the tunnels as the earth convulsed, the walls threatening to collapse, the stone screaming in protest. When I emerged, I saw the abyss, vast and insatiable, yawning above, a great, hungry maw stretching toward oblivion.

And Eleanor.

She has returned, utterly transformed, bound to him in ways I cannot begin to fathom. Whatever rituals remained undone, they have completed them. The end is here, unravelling in the night air, in the void swallowing everything I built.

This was never my intent. I did not seek annihilation, only understanding. The secrets of life and death, of control over both. That would have been the ultimate power.

I should have destroyed him when I had the chance. I should have destroyed them both.

But it is far too late.

I watch powerless now as they stand before the abyss, welcomed, accepted, becoming. And I know, with sinking certainty, that they will be the end of us all.

Unless

They could still be reasoned with. They could still be bribed.

Perhaps I can still escape.

Flesh and Soul Entwined

The sky was still open—not shattered, but peeled back, as though something vast and unspeakable had reached down, splitting reality apart to look inside.

What remained was not darkness, not stars, just hunger. Watching. Endless.

Lord Blackwood lay motionless, lips twitching in silent prayer to a god who had never been listening.

Dr. Fairfax was gone. Perhaps he was buried beneath the wreckage, swallowed by the ruins, or maybe he had fled, vanishing into the void before the world came undone.

The last survivors stumbled into the shadows, their bodies marked, their minds forever broken. They would never speak of what they had seen. But they would never forget.

Yet the faithful remained.

They knelt.

They waited.

The gods had risen.

And they would be worshipped.

Forever.

James turned to Eleanor, his fingers tangled in her hair, his lips swollen from their final, world-ending kiss.

She met his gaze and smiled.

This was not the end.

It was only the beginning.

The old world yielded.

Flesh and soul, life and death, twisted into one.

And above them, beyond the gaping sky, something stirred.

Something hungry.

Something waiting.

Something that had noticed them.

Excerpt from the diary of…

I began this diary to remember who I was, once a girl, once dreaming, once fragile. But that girl is dust, lost in the tide of something far greater.

Those dreams unravelled, spilled into the abyss, swallowed whole, remade into eternity.

I am no longer singular.

We are one, an echo that bends the mountains, a breath that hushes the seas, a whisper that burrows into the hearts of those who remain. His voice thrums through me, ancient and ceaseless, and I am the silence between.

There is no dawn. No dusk. No before. No after.

Only us.

Only forever.

But the abyss is not done. It has noticed us and turned its gaze toward new horizons, new offerings, and new prayers.

There is still more to claim.

And soon

We will answer.

The End

Portrait Gallery

Eleanor Ashcroft

James Sinclair

Lord Alistair Blackwood

Dr. Ambrose Fairfax

Edgar Frye

Marian Collins