Becoming

“Here, my dear. Take it.” The glass is heavy in your hand, solid crystal and the flickering liquid within. You’re not shaking, not yet, but it moves as if you are, shuddering against your skin just like you shuddered under her as she prepared you for this. It takes so long to wring the sin out of someone, especially someone like you; you can’t help but blush as you think about it, eyes downcast and thighs pressed together, but that’s okay. Shame and desire aren’t sins—she wouldn’t lie to you about that. ...

The video starts immediately, with no explanation, its only context a steadily increasing timestamp blinking in a corner.

The tape is shit quality, footage full of splotches and distortions; whatever closed circuit system it was recorded on was obviously too close to the manifestation. There’s no sound.

It’s not HER, of course, not even one of HER acolytes; just some thing with a long-beaked mask wearing one of HER lesser aspects. But It’s still the closest you’ve ever gotten to HER, the closest you can safely get, and Its presence is intoxicating— Or maybe that’s just what you Know is inside the slim briefcase sitting on the floor next to It. It’s tapping Its pen on the table, waiting, the last drops of blood draining from the attached no-longer-sterile lancet— ...

It takes more hits to break the glass than you expected, but you always were weak, and it doesn’t help that you’re so worried about overcommitting and tearing your arm open. When it finally breaks you knock the fragments out of the frame before reaching in to unlock the door. It’s weird being here at night, when the store is quiet and dark; the soft glow of an exit sign pulses above you, reflecting off the countless shelves which line the space. The jars and vials which fill them almost to bursting shimmer like prisms in the light. ...

By the time you find the secret door you’re almost ready to give up and call it a day (well, a night. Can’t rob the necropolis during the day!). Maybe this tomb was never finished, this mausoleum never occupied. Maybe it’s just a dead end! A trick. It’s been known to happen. Besides, your lantern’s starting to sputter, the last refill of oil on your belt hanging with the weight of finality. If you waste it on a dead end then it’ll be weeks until you can scrounge up enough for another attempt, maybe months before you can sneak in again. ...

She only went to the witch as a last resort, after years of being shuffled between doctors, of mortifying exams and racks upon racks of bloody vials. And, of course, pain. Always pain, always the ebb and flow of agony filling her and fading away with no rhythm she could hear. She wasn’t stupid, no matter how her mind was fogged; she knew that witches were a last resort, dangerous and mercurial. That’s what she had always been taught, what she’d always heard in breathless news reports about children plucked from their beds and remade into new forms. ...

Feral angel girl sitting in the basement, far from her flock’s nests, filthy light splintered by broken windows falling all around her. It reminds her of her halo, in a way. Letting it fill her senses feels the same as the Thing used to feel in her mind. Years ago someone dragged a whole-ass payphone into the basement, just pulled it right out of the ground and tossed it down. It still sparks form time to time. ...

Each layer went on easier than the last, cloying red salvation closing over your bare skin, burying you deeper and deeper. At first the brush’s rough hairs hurt, tore your skin and sent your own red welling up, but by the third coat you could hardly feel a thing. The pain brought to mind her warnings, that she would not be gentle and that this would hurt–that your claustrophobia might make this process unpalpable, that if you broke the cocoon she would not be able to wrap it around you a second time. Hurt filled you with fear. ...

You welcomed it in, eagerly brought it into your body; all that foggy liquid that flowed from nothing into your chalice, hardly contained by the force of your bindings, the strength of your spells. It shone so brightly in the sputtering candlelight. You hardly waited for the last of the spell to fade before you brought it to your lips, gulped it down in a single mass; it tasted so right flowing down your throat, thick and rich and savory, the chalice never seeming to empty. ...