Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II (22 page)

Gloria turned to look for Madria. This was all so
terrible, so wrong. The beautiful demoness was behind her. She
placed a hand lovingly on Gloria’s shoulder and batted those long
luxurious lashes. Gloria stared into Madria’s midnight eyes, at her
own tiny reflection mirrored in those pools of liquid night, and
felt her unease lessening. She didn’t know why she was getting so
attached to this demon. She was certain that the woman held no true
affection for her. She was little more than a pet or a toy, as
Mephisto had said. Still, she felt a closeness to Madria that she
didn’t feel toward the others. It was almost as if she knew her,
had known her for years.

“Are you ready?” Mephisto didn’t wait for her to
answer. He picked Gloria up and slammed her down into the rotting
corpse that lay on the floor between them.

“No! Oh God! Help!”

One of the first things she’d learned in hell was
that uttering God’s name was blasphemy. But she didn’t care. She
was overwhelmed by the horror of her own putrefying flesh. Her
senses screamed out, revolting against this rotting meat casket she
suddenly found herself entombed in. She was suffocating. Her heart
and lungs were useless and she felt as if she were dying all over
again. Then she felt hands working inside of her, ripping out
organs and replacing them with other parts. Her heart suddenly
began to beat but it was not her heart. This one was different,
more powerful. It beat with a thundering pulse that vibrated
through her bones. She screamed as she felt layer after layer of
skin being grated from her body. Every nerve-ending shrieked in
bone-jarring anguish as she was unmade and remade in her new form.
Her eyes, her breasts, her mouth, even her vagina was reworked or
replaced.

She felt nothing like herself when she finally rose
from the cave floor. Her nerves were still on fire from the crude
surgery, but the pain was fading quickly. Her new muscles surged
with power like dynamos. She could feel an unseen energy vibrating
in her sinews.

“You’ve spent your entire life as a victim. Now
you’re going to get a taste of what it feels like to be the
victimizer. Go. Enjoy yourself. Bring us souls!” Mephisto laughed
and the other demons joined in.

“But what do I do? How do I bring you souls?”

“You’ll figure it out. Now go!”

“Where?”

He pointed. “There. I believe you already know the
way.”

“But what—”

It was the tunnel. The same one she’d walked through
with her daughter so long ago. She had no idea where Angela was
now. She wasn’t even sure she still cared. Nothing mattered to her
now. Nothing could be worse than what she was leaving behind.

She stumbled toward the tunnel, taking one look back
before disappearing.

Heaven’s light looked gray in the distance, a mocking
reminder of Gloria’s sacrifice. She wondered if she was somehow
again being punished, and if the demons knew that God had accepted
her.

Of course they had to know. What was it Madria had
said? She couldn’t believe he’d almost accepted Gloria.
Would he
still?

She glanced down at her new form, skin glistening
like the skin of the Masters, muscles rippling beneath the surface,
alive when she should not be, on her way back to earth to bring the
Masters more souls. The very fact that she was alive again, going
back to earth, was a defiance of God’s will. He had condemned her
to death and to hell and now she was alive again. The Masters were
sealing her fate, making sure she would never be forgiven now.

Her new body was fast and tireless. In no time she
had reached the fork in the tunnels. One way led to heaven’s gate.
The other led back to life. Gloria stopped and looked into both
tunnels. She wanted to run back to Earth but wondered where Angela
was, if she was okay. But she knew now there was no way she could
ever save her daughter in this place. Besides, she reasoned, it had
been insanity for her to risk her own salvation for the sake of the
ungrateful child. She wondered if she’d still be forgiven if she
went back to heaven now, in her demon form, with
their
blood
running through her veins,
their
organs beating in her
chest, most of the flesh and blood God had given her still rotting
in hell. Would he accept her like this?

Did she care anymore?

Part of her wanted so badly to try, wanted the
misery and confusion to end but she was terrified of being denied.
She’d turned her back on
him
when he’d offered her
salvation. Gloria turned and headed back into the tunnel, once
again turning her back on heaven and God. She was not ready
yet.

The tunnel narrowed as she made her way through. She
had gone far past the point at which she and Angela had become
worms. Now she was crawling along on her belly, scrambling her way
through the ever narrowing tunnel. Claustrophobia began to set in
as the space grew progressively tight and became unbearably hot and
moist. Soon she was completely submerged in some viscous fluid,
holding her breath and trying not to panic. The walls surrounding
her felt more like flesh than stone; she could smell blood and
mucus and bile, hear a heartbeat and feel it pulsing around her.
When she pushed hard enough the walls of the tunnel expanded.
Gloria started to suffocate again. She suddenly realized where she
was.

Her fingers prodded the lining of her casing, and
she scraped its sides, trying to dig out a hole, to escape. Panic
set in as she began pushing hard against the flesh that surrounded
her, punching and clawing at it until it gave, until she began to
see light through the rents she tore in her tomb of meat and bone.
Something began cutting its way to her from the outside, widening
the gash she’d ripped in the living flesh around her. Another pair
of hands reached in and grabbed hers, helping to pull her free.

With their help she ripped her way completely out of
the body she’d been trapped inside and spilled onto the floor in a
gush of blood and amniotic fluids.

She looked up and wiped the gore from her eyes.
Black candles flickered around her in the near darkness. Beneath
her was an altar, and behind her was a huge crucifix made of gold
and silver, with Jesus’ crucified body pointing toward the floor. A
giant pentagram covered the entire surface of the altar.

Figures in black robes chanting in Latin surrounded
her. Gloria rose to her feet. The men who had helped to free her
bowed as they backed away. Their arms and chests were stained
crimson from the blood of whatever vessel had born her.

The body of a young girl lay torn open from her
clavicle to her vagina, internal organs spilled around her corpse,
her face twisted into a grimace of anguish. Her hands and feet had
been bound by barbed wire, and it had shredded her skin down to the
bone, no doubt as she’d tried to struggle to free herself while
Gloria tore her way out of the young girl’s flesh. The “vessel” had
been no more than fifteen years old. Young enough to be Gloria’s
daughter.

“Who did this?” Gloria pointed back at the dead
girl.

One of the hooded men who’d helped pull her out
slowly stepped forward. “I did, uh … your unholiness…. I am the
high-priest of the Order of—”

Gloria reached for him, meaning to grab him, shake
him, slap him across the face—whatever helped her express her
outrage, her anger. But she didn’t know her own strength. She
punched her fist into his stomach and drew back a handful of
organs, pulling them slowly from his body, staring into the man’s
eyes as his soul fled. And Gloria knew where it was going.

She lifted her other hand to support him, to keep
him from falling but the talons sliced into his neck, arterial
blood spurting. Gloria disemboweled him, her hellish claws digging
deep into his entrails, tearing out much of his liver and lungs.
The man’s hood fell off, revealing an unlined, hairless face, and
braces when he opened his mouth a final time to scream, already
dead, his body just going through the motions..

Gloria dropped his lifeless body and stepped back in
horror as she realized that this “high priest” was little more than
a kid himself. He was no older than the girl on the altar.

“Oh my god, she murdered Jerry!” Another worshipper
fell to his knees, sobbing, finally scrambling away from
Gloria.

“She’s going to kill us!” someone else screamed.

But then a voice boomed from the back of the church.
“Silence! What the fuck is wrong with you kids? I thought you fools
wanted to go to hell? Well here it is! You should be happy for your
friend. He has gone on to glory.”

Gloria instantly recognized the voice. He wore a
pinstriped sharkskin suit and looked like he was auditioning for a
bad ’80s mobster movie. He still had that reptilian grin and those
beady black eyes, that pasty white skin, that ring of flaming red
hair circling his bald head. Murdering him had done nothing to
improve his looks.

Gloria nodded, not exactly surprised at his sudden
reappearance in her life. Just like a bad penny. “Vlad.”

“Welcome back, Gloria. You look lovely, dear! Very
becoming in your new skin.” He walked toward her from the back of
the church. “You ready to start your new arrangement? The Masters
sent me here to watch over you. You know, make sure you don’t fuck
up your part of the bargain.”

“And if I won’t do it?”

Bill Vlad pulled out an oversized cigar and bit off
the end. He was still grinning as he held it between his teeth and
lit it, inhaling deeply, blowing the smoke into Gloria’s face as he
approached her.

“If you don’t do what you’re told, what you’ve been
recreated to do, you’ll never see Angela again.” His smile widened
until it seemed to swallow the entire room. “But I will. I’ll see
her every day for eternity.”

Gloria looked away. The very sight of the man
disgusted her, made her want to peel the man’s face right off of
his skull. She thought about Angela suffering in that Stygian pit.
She remembered how the girl had tricked her into killing herself.
How she’d given up her last chance at heaven for her, and how
Angela had then rejected her again even after her sacrifice.

“Why should I care? The girl hates me. She set me
up. All she’s ever done is fuck up my life and make a fool out of
me. I’ve already given up too much for her. Fuck her. I’ve got to
think about myself for a change.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll fuck her in ways you can’t even
imagine. Ways your brief stay in hell still could not allow you to
comprehend. I’ll cut off her head and fuck her throat and she’ll
feel every minute of it because she can’t die. She can’t ever die,
but she can suffer. And I know you, Gloria. I know you better than
you know yourself. You could never allow that to happen, not even
now. You believe Angela really does love you, the same way you
believe your filthy cum-sucking ass will someday get into heaven.
You’re hopeless and pathetic and you will do whatever the fuck I
tell you to.”

Gloria raised one of her taloned hands, preparing to
rip the con-man in two.

“Oh, please do. I love the pain. You can’t kill me.
I’m a demon—just like you now.”

“I’m not a demon.”

“Oh, really. You think you could have ripped that
kid’s guts out if you weren’t? I guess you did that sort of thing
all the time when you were alive. Look at yourself.”

Gloria knew what she looked like. But what they had
done to her physically didn’t matter. She wasn’t a demon! Couldn’t
be.

She stretched out her arms and looked at her hands
which now ended in long hooked claws. Her skin was an inky bluish
black, with spidery red veins and capillaries visible just below
the surface. Her breasts were larger than they’d been in life, and
now there was no silicone beneath them. It was all hell-spawned
flesh.

Vlad held up a mirror and Gloria snatched it from
his hands. She trembled as she raised it to her face. Her hair was
long and platinum blonde as it had been in life. Her lips were
full, and behind them were row upon row of fangs. The most
startling transformation were her eyes. They looked just like
Madria’s, dark oily pools swirling with color, all pupil, no whites
at all.

“You are one sexy demon bitch. They’re going to
fucking worship you!” Vlad practically danced around as he spoke.
“I’m going to form a whole religion around you. The Masters will
have more souls than they know what to do with, and we’ll live in
hell like royalty! Just look at how these poor sacks of shit adore
you.”

Gloria looked around the room at the hooded figures.
Some were on their knees, heads pressed to the floor in
supplication. Others had removed their hoods and were staring at
her in adoration.

“These stupid bastards will do whatever the fuck you
tell them to. And there are thousand more like them. Probably
millions.”

“So?”

Vlad drew deeply on the cigar. For effect, she
assumed. Gloria was less than impressed. “I don’t think I like your
tone,” he said.

Gloria tried to meet his eyes but her nerve wavered.
She was powerful, more powerful than she’d ever dreamt of being,
but beneath it all, she was still Gloria and it was hard not to
still think of herself as a victim after all she’d been
through.

The reptilian sneer on Vlad’s face was replaced with
a stony expression, clearly some sort of warning. Vlad had a
strange habit of playing good cop/bad cop all by himself.

“Don’t think for a second I can’t take this all away
from you,” he said, leaning closer to her, blowing smelly cigar
smoke in her face. “With the snap of my fingers—” He eyed her
carefully, as if weighing options, as if wondering how far to push
her.

Gloria turned away, dropping her head to stare at
the floor, still terribly uncomfortable in her new form, hoping he
wouldn’t push too far. This was all so confusing. She wasn’t sure
what she was capable of, or what Vlad was capable of now that he’d
been reborn. He had only been human before and he had fucked her
life up eight ways to Sunday. Now he was immortal and still driven
by the same perversions, the same need to control, to corrupt, to
pervert and degrade. As much as she wanted to tear his heart out of
his flabby chest she didn’t want to find out what depravity he was
capable of now. She didn’t want to find out that she was still a
victim after all. It was better to wait until she had time to fully
assess her powers.