The Nightmare Game (70 page)

“You really are quite gullible, woman!” she
sneered. “‘The Goddess seems indisposed,’ she mocked. ‘Oh, yes, and let’s take
advantage of her while her back is turned.’ Ha! As you can clearly see, and as
I made a point of showing you earlier, my back being turned is not a problem for
me!” She then began to spin her head around in circles, cackling madly.

The bile that had bubbled up inside of me before
returned and this time I could not choke it down. I threw up. I had nothing in
my stomach but water and stomach acid, but I couldn’t hold even that down. She
stopped spinning her head but as she faced me, her back still to me, she looked
at the floor and scowled angrily.

“Look what you did! I mean, just look at what you
did! You’ve messed my floor! My beautiful, clean floor! Now you are going to
have to clean that up! I most certainly am not going to clean that up! You
are!”

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she
threw back her backwards head and laughed.

“Oh, that’s right. You can’t! I’m going to keep
you nicely shackled and then I’m going to kill you. I guess that wouldn’t leave
you with much of a window for cleaning, now would it?” She sighed, resignedly,
and, while keeping her head stationery, she swiveled her body around so she was
now, head and body, facing me normally. “I suppose I’ll just have to get
someone else to do it, won’t I?”

She clapped her hands loudly and out of nowhere,
Max appeared alongside a mop and bucket.

“Max!” I screamed, desperation raw in my voice.
“Help me! Please!”

“Max can’t help you,” Arrosha’s oily voice oozed.
“He belongs to me. Why, Max is going to help
me
,
aren’t you, Max?

“Max, our guest Ashley has made quite a mess here.
I need you to clean it up.”

Max said nothing. His normally hunched posture
became even more hunched, as if he wanted to crawl into himself to escape. Our
eyes met but for a second before he quickly stared back down at the ground. His
sense of shame seemed profound.

Arrosha appeared not to notice as she continued.
“And my boy Max here knows that if he’s a good dog and helps me well that I
will reward him and make him pretty.” She patted his head condescendingly as if
to prove that he was, in fact, her dog. “And he knows that the more he helps
me, the prettier I will make him.” Her voice took on an ominous edge as she
continued. “And he also knows that if he’s a bad dog, I will punish him harshly
and that I will make him so very ugly that no one will want to look at him. The
very sight of him will make children scream. You know all that, don’t you Max?”

Max nodded his head “yes” as he tried to crawl
even further into himself.

“And here are some of the things that he is going
to help me with.” She waved her hand again and beside me appeared a table. It
was filled with instruments of all kinds, ugly and sharp with a nasty, surgical
appearance.

“These were my idea, of course,” Arrosha said as
cheerily as if this were a second grade show-and-tell session. “At least, most
of them were. Max reminded me to bring the javelin, which, as you’ll soon see,
we need. I’d almost completely forgotten. Good Max.” Again she petted his head
as if he were indeed her dog. “That’s right, you remembered, didn’t you Max.
Good boy.”

Max hung his head even lower, but when his eyes
met mine, his expression was inscrutable.

I was left to wonder what use she had for a
javelin as she went on and on, discussing the instruments of my impending
torture as if she were making a presentation at a home kitchenware’s party.

As she did so, Max continued looking at the floor
without enthusiasm, his expression still completely unreadable.

“All right then,” Arrosha clapped her hands
together once in anticipation, “we’re almost ready to get started on Ashley.
Her voice held far too much enthusiasm. “But first,” she added cheerily, “I’m
starving. I really
must
eat!”

She clapped her hands twice and a handsome young
man, naked, appeared before her. He looked around the room, trying to hide his
nakedness with his hands as best he could, an expression of fear and confusion
on his face, the sight of my predicament visibly adding to his anxiety. When he
caught sight of Arrosha, he jumped back and recoiled, a loud whimper escaping
his lips.

“Have I become such a fearsome sight?” she uttered
in a tone more soothing than I had heard from her to date. “I know I am not at
my best when I’m this hungry but am I indeed that terrible to look upon?”

The young man just stood there, whimpering and
shaking.

“Are you afraid?” Arrosha asked in mock concern.

The young man nodded.

“Well, you can blame her for that,” she said,
pointing to me, “She’s the one responsible for your current situation.”

She glided over to him and stroked his cheek with
one finger. The young man recoiled with fear and disgust, but like me, he
seemed unable to move.

 “You see,” she said, conspiratorially, “Under
normal circumstances, I would never frighten my food. It gives me indigestion.
Of course, usually, I never let myself get this hungry. I just never, ever let
myself go like this. But because of that one, there,” she pointed at me again,
“I just didn’t have a choice. It’s because of her I had to expend so much
energy that I became this way. Oh sure, I could have eaten before now. I had
the time, but I didn’t have the audience. You see, dear,” she said to the
quivering young man, “getting this hungry isn’t very good for me. I don’t like
it, not one iota. But I had to show that one the consequences of her actions,
didn’t I? I mean, how else was she to learn? And, as usual,” she sighed, “the
lesson fell all on my shoulders.”

The young man said nothing; he just continued to
be frightened beyond measure. Max looked away and at the ground, probably
pretending he was somewhere else. Needing something, anything to do, he mopped
up my vomit.

I tried to look away myself, but whenever I did,
Arrosha’s restraints bit painfully into my flesh, so I was forced to watch.

“You do realize now that everything you’re going
through is because of her. It’s all her fault. She’s the one that’s driven me
to this.”

Having said that, Arrosha began to change.
Tentacles emerged from beneath her robes, lengthening until they reached the
young man and wrapped themselves around him.

He screamed in horror and frantically tried to run
but she held him fast in the grip of her tentacles. As he stood there,
hopelessly trapped, whimpering and screaming and trying to get away, the more
he struggled, the tighter her grip became.

“Don’t fight me, baby,” she cooed dangerously.
“Mama’s hungry and she needs to eat. Now.”

Arrosha’s metamorphosis did not stop with her
sprouting of tentacles. As the transmogrification continued, it attained
dramatic proportions that were both fantastic and horrifying. Vertically, her
body split almost completely in two. However, instead of internal organs, large
cilial tubes revealed themselves, each one with a rudimentary mouth on the free
end that made hideous sucking noises. Only her arms, legs and head remained as
vestigial reminders that she once looked human.

The helpless young man, caught up in Arrosha’s
squid-like tentacles, screamed even more loudly now, a guttural, primitive,
unending scream that emanated from a place of primal terror within him. The
screaming intensified as she pulled him closer and closer to her body, a body
that was now a nightmare of alien proportions. She pulled him so tightly within
herself, presently nothing more than a mass of feeding tubes, and closed
herself around him so completely that the only evidence remaining of the young
man were muffled shrieks and the movement of his legs as they thrashed and
flailed about madly. While these ended soon, they did not end soon enough.

In the now still and quiet room, the only sounds
left to be heard were the wet gurgling and slurping noises of the Arrosha
creature as she finished her feeding before releasing the poor youth. But he
was a youth no more. Where only moments before there stood a strapping young
fellow at the peak of his manhood, there now limped a ghastly creature, a
creature such as those I had first encountered on the bayou road, those that
had almost killed me with a touch, those that later turned two of Arrosha’s own
hand-picked followers into living statues. He was an “it” now, a ghoul, a
zombie. It stumbled around at first, staring in its dead way at the ground,
trying to balance, as Arrosha slowly began quite literally pulling herself back
together, returning her form to human once again.

She sighed deeply and luxuriated with rapture in
the afterglow of her meal. As her flesh plumped up, it was like viewing in
reverse a time-lapse film of the decomposing corpse of an emaciated woman dead
of starvation and disease, now returning back to life. The visible blue veins
that ran under her skin began to soften until they disappeared entirely; her
body was no longer skeletal and her face was no longer a skull. She now looked
much the same as I had last seen her in the tower room. She looked tired and a
little drawn, perhaps, but she was still incredibly beautiful.

As if I had seen all that she had wanted me to
see, Arrosha, with no visible effort on her part, released my vision so I could
now look where I may.

I saw to my horror the ghoulish young man, who had
left my field of vision whilst I was forced to watch Arrosha regenerate, was
now walking slowly toward me. Desperately, I looked over to Max for help, but
he had turned away to avoid having to witness Arrosha’s atrocity with the poor
youth and he still had his head averted, his hands covering his eyes. I
squirmed about, struggling vainly against my restraints as the creature
continued its sluggish shuffle closer toward me, holding out its hands
pitifully as its pathetic voice rasped “help me”.

I screamed, terrified beyond belief as it grew
nearer and nearer, for, unlike most of Arrosha’s horrors, I was familiar enough
with this one to know just how dangerous one touch from it would be. As its
approach continued closer and closer, I could do nothing except scream and
struggle, for I was trapped and unable to escape. While it must have been only
seconds, it seemed an eternity before Arrosha snapped out of her drug-like
euphoria and shouted “Max!”

Max now emerged reluctantly from the sanctum of
his inner hiding place, parting the fingers of his hand first, peeking out to
see if it was safe to look.

“Max!” Arrosha barked again. “The javelin! Get it!
Now!”

Max ran over to Arrosha’s table of unhealthy
instruments, picked up the javelin and threw it at the former young man with an
aim sure and precise, an aim which belied his former athleticism, a quality of
which Arrosha had not yet stripped him. The javelin caught the obscene creature
in the chest, which it penetrated easily. The force of the blow hurled it to
the side of the room it was nearest, fastening it there, where it wriggled and
squirmed like a live insect pinned to a board.

“Come here, Max,” Arrosha ordered him harshly.

He was trembling as he made himself small again
and cautiously and sheepishly shuffled toward her.

“What did I tell you, Max?”

“To pay attention,” he mumbled in such a low tone
I could barely hear him.

“What did you say, Max?”

“To pay attention,” he repeated, his head down,
staring intently at his feet, looking very much like a schoolboy being dressed
down by his headmaster. He was shaking severely.

“And did you do as you were told?”

“No.”

“No, what, Max?”

“No, my queen.”

“That’s right, you didn’t,” she continued
redressing him in her mock sing-song tones. “And what almost happened because
of it?”

“The creature almost got Ashley.”

“That’s right, Max,” she said before fling into a
rage, her voice now full of fury. “Because of your complete and total
incompetence, that creature almost got Ashley! Do you think I’m doing this for
fun, Max? Do you think I’m doing this because I’m enjoying it? Tell me, do I
look like I’m enjoying this?”

Max shook his head, his trembling increasing, “No,
my queen,” he almost sobbed.

“I’ve had to go to a lot of trouble on account of
that one,” she screamed, pointing to me. “A lot of trouble. And your
incompetence almost ruined the only real pleasure that I’m going to get out of
this whole damnable experience. Because of your infernal daydreaming, that
loathsome, filthy creature almost cost me my prized sow over there! And she
belongs to me alone! She’s mine to dispose of! Do you hear me, Max? Mine!”

Max said nothing, but the pitiful sounds of his
terrified weeping became audible.

“All right, then,” Arrosha said, calming down.
“I’ll let this one go. After all, your aim was excellent, once you finally woke
up. But this had better not happen again, Max. You know what I’ll do to you if
you fail me again.”

By now Max could not speak. He was so upset he
could only sob, tremble and nod.

Arrosha glided over to him and lightly stroked his
head. He winced at her touch.

“Oh, Max,” she said in a voice both soothing and
deadly menacing at the same time. “I do so want to make you pretty. I really
do. And you want to be pretty again, don’t you? You want me to make you even
prettier than you were originally, don’t you? And you want me to put you in a
place even higher than Ben and Geoffrey were, don’t you?”

Again, he just nodded.

“I just need to know that I can count on you,
that’s all. Look what happened with Geoffrey. I thought I could count on him
and he screwed me over. I can’t have that happen again, you know that. I need
you to help me with this, Max. You know I can’t touch her with that necklace on.
You know I need you to take it off of her for me. You know I need you to
torture its energy out of her so that I can have some fun with her, too, before
I finish her off, don’t you?”

Max nodded, not looking up at her. She stroked his
hair again and again he winced.

“Good boy. Now, there’s my good dog. Go stand by
our little prisoner and just wait over there until I need you again. And pay
attention this time.”

Max shuffled over toward me and stood next to me,
not looking at me, not looking up.

“And so, my dear, dear Ashley,” she said,
returning her focus to me. “Back to you.

“Now you can see now why I waited so long to feed,
why I put myself through such depravation. It was difficult for me, very, very
difficult. You understand, I don’t like hunger any more than anybody else does.
And mine was no mere hunger, as you well saw. Mine was starvation beyond the
survival limit of any mortal. Sure, I could have fed before. Perhaps my having
to keep up with your troublesomeness didn’t give me enough time to enjoy a full
meal, but I had ample opportunity for a quick snack in between, here and there.
As a food source, humans can keep for a long, long time for me if I don’t drain
them dry. But I didn’t snack, Ashley. I resisted that urge and it took an
extreme amount of will power on my part not to. Do you know why I didn’t feed
when I could have, why I forced myself to suffer so? It was for your sake
alone, Ashley. It was all for you.”

“I never asked you to do anything for me,” I said,
disgust mingling with my terror.

“That doesn’t matter. You toyed with me, Ashley,
you threatened me with the only weapon upon this earth capable of destroying
me.”

“I never toyed with you, Arrosha,” I replied.
“Like I’ve been telling you all along, I got sucked into this against my will.
I never chose this path. All I’ve been doing this whole time has been just
trying to stay alive.”

“Your motives are meaningless. Your road to hell
may have been paved with good intentions, Ashley, but it has been paved
nonetheless. So here you are, now in hell, a hell of my choosing. Before you
die, I will make sure that you know what hell really is. You will, I assure
you, pray many times over that you had chosen mere death as your path.

“But we digress. The reason I held off feeding for
so long, the reason I allowed myself to get so far beyond starvation is that I
needed you to see it. In truth, while I can feed that way any time I wish to, I
generally abhor it and have never done so as a matter of choice, for frightened
food is no delicacy. I’ve only ever done so when in complete deprivation mode,
to take revenge on an enemy, or to make the essence for my followers, the
essence that you loved so much at my mansion. The only reason I fed that way
today was to make a point and teach you a lesson, a lesson you sorely needed to
learn.”

“That’s how you make essence?” I asked her. It had
sickened me to discover that essence came from people, but to find out they had
died so horribly was more than my mind could handle.

“Of course,” she said nonchalantly. “Fortunately
for me, the end result is always creatures like the one that Max just impaled.
What is it that you called them? Ghouls? Zombies?” She laughed cruelly.
“Technically, they’re neither. Unlike ghouls, they don’t set out to feed on
either the dead or the living. They simply see taking pieces of your life
force, in whatever tiny remnant is left of their minds, as your ‘helping’ them.
They have no means of knowing that they are killing you or that they are using
you for food. There’s simply not enough grey matter left. So, therefore, true
ghouls they are not. Neither are they zombies, for zombies are the dead come
back to life and these creatures haven’t quite died completely yet, so actually
they aren’t even in that lovely ‘undead’ category at all. Actually, come to
think of it, I do suppose they are more like the true zombies of places such as
Haiti, except that there are no drugs or ‘magic powders’ involved in the making
of them; and of course my little pets can kill an ordinary person with just one
touch.

“I have no real control over them, unless you
count distracting them with a more powerful energy source. For eons, whenever
I’d make essence, I’d simply just finish off the creatures or lock them in a
room to let them stumble around until they died. They don’t last long, slightly
less than an hour. What a waste; I’ve only of late discovered a technique to
preserve them. Even as recently as with the group I used with Max here, I
didn’t have the know-how to keep them around long enough for them to have any practical
use. I mean, let’s face it, egg salad at a hot summer picnic has a longer shelf
life than they do!” She laughed madly to herself again. “So what’s a girl to do
to keep these things from going less than fresh until it was time for the big
party? That was my problem. And my solution was ingenious, if I must say so
myself!”

I thought it ironic that anyone claiming to be a
true goddess should even need to search for a solution to something that should
have been extremely easy her, had she actually possessed the powers of creation
that she had earlier claimed.

“You see, dear,” she continued, obviously very
proud of herself, “As it turned out, all I had to do was to create a sealed
room, divert a miniscule amount of energy from Edmond’s stasis chamber, for
sadly, a miniscule amount was all I was able to take, and, viola! I had a
freezer of sorts in which to keep them fresh for weeks. Zombies on ice!
Although, first chance I get, I really must create a suitable name for them.
The ‘nearly dead’ doesn’t have enough zing to it, does it?

“For my purposes, I had to create several such
freezers. The batch that chased you to the mansion wasn’t the same batch that
chased the lot of you into my mausoleum and took down Antonio and Kerry. Oh,
heavens no. I had to create a fresh batch for every occasion on which I used
them. The ones you saw from a distance were mere illusion. Like I said,” she
sighed, “these babies go bad very fast. Once I released them, they only stayed
good for just under the usual hour, and then they died completely.” She pointed
to the creature still squirming on the javelin. “See, that one’s beginning to
fade already.”

The pathetic sight of what was left of the poor
young man still struggling, albeit much more slowly and weakly, urged me to
ask, “Is he in pain?”

Arrosha shrugged callously and answered
dismissively, “Who knows? Who cares?”

“So let me get this straight. When these things
were chasing me on the bayou road, you weren’t controlling them?” I asked,
hoping that this was a question she cared to answer. The longer I could keep
her talking, I figured, the longer I could stave off torture and death. My fate
was inevitable, I knew, but I just kept hoping beyond hope that something,
anything, might save me if I just could put it off long enough.