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Simon was back in the Iron lung. He was prone, flayed out on the floor. He couldn’t move his body. No matter how hard he tried, how desperately he tried to kick and flail, he was motionless. He stared at the low ceiling, eyes wide and unseeing. He breathed in panicked stuttered gasps. He screamed, shouted. He strained his voice hoarse. It didn’t matter, there was no one to hear him in the bottom of the blood ocean, no one but the eel.
Then the blood started to rise. It didn’t rise fast, it burbled and slid, thick and sludge like across the exposed parts of his skin. The blood was warm and disgusting, like it was flowing newly from slit wrists, or squeezed out from a pulsating heart. There was nothing Simon could do. He had to lay and wait as the thick viscous liquid crept inch by inch up his paralysed body. Simon was crying.
He cried until he couldn’t cry anymore, and still the blood rose. His tears merged into the red. The only clear water he could offer, subsumed into the sickly gore. The stench of iron and rot filled his nostrils, it invaded his lungs and forced its way into his body. He was covered, he was engulfed in red warm, sickly wet. He strained up, tried to keep his nose and mouth above the onslaught. It was useless, the blood flooded in there too.
Simon choked and gagged, bile rising up to meet it. The blood forced it down, down past his gullet, right into his stomach. It sloshed inside him, expanding, violating.
Blood filled his lungs, he was drowning in it. His chest burned and it hurt so much, he felt like he was dying. He was dying and dying but he wasn’t dead. No, he wasn’t allowed to die. The thing. The eel. It was waiting for him. It wanted inside him. He was already inside it.
A loud, shrieking screech filled his ears. The iron lung being torn apart like it was made up of paper. The sound travelled through the blood, directly into his ears. His eardrums burst, sharp pain ricocheting agony through his head. The blood flowed in through there too, burrowing in. It ate into his head, pickled his brain. It leeched hate and pain and misery directly into his gray matter.
Another sound pulsed spikes into him, harsher than the tearing of metal, more abhorrent. The thing, it was laughing. Simon’s pain fed its appetite. He could feel it. Large and omnipresent, it curled around him, there was no light in the blood ocean, just shapes and darker shapes. The Blood Eel was like a mountain, like a river. It was solid, and then it wasn’t. It nudged up against him, huge and cataclysmic. The blood was warm and slick, the Eel’s hide was cold and rough. It trilled, soft like a lover. It was fond, Simon was a favourite, Simon had lasted longer than the other playthings. It wanted to reward him.
Something punched through his gut, a tooth, a spike, he didn’t know. It ripped a hole low in his belly and Simon screamed, expelling out what meagre air he had left in his lungs. What he felt before wasn’t dying. This was what dying felt like. His very being was being liquified. There was acid melting through his veins. His gut was being torn apart by the atom.
The thing screeched its pleasure and pulled out. Then it pushed back in. Then it did it again. And again and again and again. Simon was sobbing, screaming. He ached to take it out, push it away. He wanted to fight and claw and lash out. He wanted to break away. He wanted it gone, he wanted to be anywhere but here. But he couldn’t move.
Stop. He needed it to stop. He was being defiled, tainted, changed. He was being violated.
Stop! Please! He screamed through the blood in his throat. STOP!
“STOP!”
Simon woke up screaming, his voice was hoarse, like he’d been doing it for a while. He felt sick and woozy. His stomach was cramping so bad that he felt like he was going to throw up. His head was pounding. The bright sunshine pouring in through the gauzy curtains didn’t help.
Simon turned over and got to the edge of the bed in time. He vomited all over the floor. The cramping didn’t stop. He curled up on the edge of the bed and realised he was crying. His pillow was damp with tears and sweat and saliva. It was disgusting, he felt disgusting.
He lay back and breathed through the nausea. His entire left side was lit up in agony. He could barely move the stump of his arm.
His alarm blared and Simon flung it across the room. Had it been made of glass and metal, it would have shattered on impact. But the Xenonite tube just bounced off the wall unharmed.
A tentative knocking at his door echoed through the room.
“Simon?” A concerned voice called. “Are you okay? I heard screaming.”
Grace. Simon considered not responding and waiting for him to go away, but eventually decided it wasn’t worth it. Ryland had a particular talent for looking like a kicked puppy if Simon ignored him. He didn’t want to deal with that. His morning had been shitty enough.
He groaned as he lifted himself off the bed, everything hurt. His stomach especially hadn’t settled, lances of pain still roiling low in his belly. He stood up and had to brace himself against the wall as he got lightheaded. He grimaced at his own weakness and grabbed a bottle of water off the nightstand. He swished the first mouthful around and spit it out at the sink. Sipping a bit of the rest gingerly, he made his way to the door. The knocking had gotten more frantic and it was aggravating his headache.
He pulled the door open a crack and leaned against the wall. Ryland Grace stood on the other side, hands tangled together in worry and his glasses slipping down his nose. He was wearing another one of his knit sweaters. It made him look soft and warm. Worlds away from the dark, blood soaked caverns of his nightmares.
“Simon!” He exclaimed, a worried smile pulling at his kind features. “Are you alright? There was.. there was a lot of screaming going on.”
“I’m fine.” Simon said, and his voice cracked at the abuse it had taken. He cleared his throat. “Just a nightmare.”
“Oh, um. Do you wanna talk about it?” Grace asked, looking at him over the rim of his glasses.
Did he look like he wanted to talk about it? “No.”
“Alriight, anything I can do to help?”
“No.”
Grace pressed his lips together. “Do you wanna come out for breakfast then? Adrian managed to synthesise pancake batter which is huge by the way, and it really doesn’t even taste half bad, do you want to try some-“
“No.” Simon said quickly, the mere thought of food had him swallowing back bile. He made an effort to elaborate at the crestfallen look on Grace’s face. “Just not feeling too good this morning, could be a stomach bug.”
“Oh, well then, anything I can get you?”
“No.” He said, and it came out a bit harsh. He was losing his patience and the cramping was getting worse.
Grace back-pedalled nervously. He held his hands up. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll just leave now.”
He stumbled away and nearly managed to trip on his own feet. Simon felt guilty, this was his damage. He had no business taking it out on Grace.
“Hey.” Simon called. Grace stopped and turned around. “Thank you, for offering.”
Grace smiled at him brightly and lifted his hand in a thumbs up. “S’all good, anytime.”
Simon nodded at him and closed the door. He stumbled his way back to the bed and collapsed down to sit on the edge of it, he curled his hand around his stomach. He’d clean up the sick he’d left on the floor and try to get some rest. In a minute. He’d do it in just a minute.
He gathered up the blanket absently as he breathed through his various aches and pains. He pulled it off the bedspread and froze. Arrested by the sight in front of him.
There was blood staining the sheets.
Simon’s breath came quicker and he frantically searched his body, looking for a wound. There weren’t any. He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head. His shirt was clean. There was nothing on his upper body. He slowly looked down to where he had been seated. The sheets there were spotted with blood.
He ripped his pants off and it was a crime scene. There was blood all over the seat of his pants. He had been too distracted by the pain and the nausea to feel it before, but the area between his legs was wet and tacky, his thighs slid and stuck together with the sticky mess. The stale scent of iron rose up and Simon gagged. This time he made it the toilet before he threw up again. There was nothing in his stomach except for the bit of water he’d drank before. Even that burned on the way up.
He flushed, unable to bear the smell of it and stumbled into the shower. He turned the water on and ripped off his underwear, throwing it in the sink. The water sluiced down his body, clear and untainted with red. He turned his face to the spray and hoped the water would wash away the stink of iron on his body. He stayed under there for a long time.
Eventually, when his body had stopped trembling and his gut had settled some, he pulled a shaking hand between his legs. He brushed over his cock and balls and reached further between his legs. And there. Between his scrotum and anus, his flesh had been torn open. He ran a finger through the ripped folds and brought it up to eye level.
Blood. Dark red and damning coated his fingertips.
Simon brought his fingers under the spray and let it wash the blood off.
Then he crumbled to the tiled floor and started sobbing in earnest.
.
.
Time passed in a haze like state. At one point, hours later, he managed to pick himself up off the floor. He hadn’t stopped bleeding. The water diluted the blood and it ran down his legs in thin watery streaks. He tried wiping it away countless times, but he still bled.
Simon couldn’t bring himself to look between his legs, nausea leaving him lightheaded every time he tried. The torn flesh didn’t hurt. And that was wrong, it should have hurt. He’d been unmade, he’d been ripped open. It shouldn’t have felt like that bloody gash had always been there.
He’d been afraid to touch as well, he didn’t want to dig too deep. He didn’t want to know how far he’d been punctured and cored out.
He stuffed toilet paper by the handful down his underwear in a desperate attempt to stem the flow and stop himself from soiling his clothes. It worked for a while, until he bled through that too. Then he gathered it all up and flushed it down the toilet. He repeated the process.
He cleaned up the vomit and dragged his bloodied sheets and clothes to the bathtub. He dumped it all in and filled it up with water and detergent. He kneeled on the cold tiled floors and scrubbed at the blood until his hands were raw and his fingers cramped. The stain didn’t go easily, it’d dried up into a brownish red. The water turned the same dirty wretched colour. He hated to touch it, so he drained the water again and again until it ran clear and pure.
He pulled his clothes out and left them to dry around his room. They had become frayed and thin from the harsh handling. But at least it was clean and free from Simon’s filth.
Simon didn’t want to sit or lay down. He was afraid the blood would leak free from his still open wound and dirty whatever he touched. So he sat, curled into himself in the bathtub. Naked save for his underwear.
The cramping still hadn’t stopped, and the pain was near unbearable. All the moving around had only seemed to make things worse. It felt like he was being rearranged on the inside. Like his anatomy was being wrenched and twisted around on itself. He wrapped his arm around himself and turned to rest his sweat drenched forehead against the cool surface of the bathtub. He was cold, in pain and terrified.
He was hungry and getting weak from it. He thought about leaving his room to get something to eat. But he thought about potentially running into Grace and had to physically recoil. Would he look at him and know? Would he be able to tell that he was unclean? Would he smell the blood and rot scent of him? Could he tell that he’d been turned other? He imagined Grace’s bright blue eyes filling with horror and disgust and he had to squeeze his eyes shut in pain. No, he couldn’t know.
He didn’t have anything else to do except think. He thought he knew torture. The C.O.I had damned well tried its best. But this. This was something else. The knowledge of what was done to him, was being done to him, reared up like a crushing weight. The Eel was in his head. In his body. Even far away from the Blood Ocean, there was enough of its detritus left in Simon to unmake him from within.
He stared blankly at the walls until he slipped off into an exhausted sleep.
Simon dreamed again.
The blood pushed up against him from all sides, an oppressive crushing weight. It breathed for him. It shoved thick coagulated blood deep into his lungs and pressed him from the outside to push it back out again. The Eel was there. Simon turned his head and stared directly into its dead cruel eye. Bigger even than the Iron Lung, its pupil tracked his every move with fervent obsession.
The blood ocean vibrated with discordant susurrations. It overtook every thought in his brain. The thing, it was happy to see him.
It snaked its sibilant voice into his ear.
Did you like my present?
Simon flinched and it screeched in howling laughter.
So resilient, Simon. So strong. You wanted to live and now you do. Such zest for life.
Simon opened his mouth and realised he could talk despite the blood pulsing in his mouth. “What do you want from me?” he asked weakly.
The Blood Eel moved, quick and explosive. Simon was thrown around with the force of the current it made. Its tail lashed out, creating tsunamis and whirlpools in the blood. It rumbled its rage and it sounded like an earthquake. Simon remained trapped in the eye of the storm.
We were so close, Simon. Why did you leave.
Simon gasped, pressure now compressing his chest and bruising his ribs.
We could have been one. You were meant to be mine. My vessel. My womb. But you left!
Simon kicked, trying to swim away, but long ropy coils of slimy muscled flesh wrapped around his limbs. They spread him out. Drawn out like he was to be quartered.
Simon fought and clawed, but it was no use. “What the fuck are you talking about!?” He snarled, the terror making him angry.
There was a stillness as he was suspended in the liquid. The Eel hummed as if it were savouring his helplessness.
Then his gut exploded in agony. It had run him through again. Simon screamed. No, not this. Not again. The pain was absolute, it was all he was. He knew nothing else. He keened and arched. He wanted to rip his own face off.
You were meant to be my bitch! My broodmare! You were so fond of life, I was ready to show you what it felt like to make it!
The thing moved slowly inside him this time, fleshy tendrils caressing him like a lover. It hurt all the more for it. Simon could feel his mind fracturing, splitting apart at the seams. The thing jerked him around with its movements, suspended as he was in the blood. He was just a doll. Just something for this monster to sate its amusement with.
“Kill me!” He begged. “Please, just fucking kill me!”
No. You will live. You will serve your purpose.
The beast sighed its pleasure and then Simon was being filled. Blood gouged into his stomach through the hole the beast had made. Tendrils shoved into his mouth and wrenched his jaw open. Blood spilled into his gut through his throat as well. Simon could feel his abdomen ballooning, expanding. It distended grotesquely and Simon was pulled down by the weight of it.
Simon sobbed. Horror washed his mind of reason, of thought. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He could do nothing to stop it, nothing to help himself. He was alone with this monster and it had taken root inside of him.
You will carry my seed.
.
.
Simon woke up gasping and crying. He gagged, but there was nothing left to throw up. He clutched frantically at his stomach. It was flat, thank God it was flat.
It wasn’t real. He had to tell himself that. It wasn’t real.
The relief that rushed through him was so euphoric he started laughing. He laughed until he started crying again. He was still in the tub. The blood had soaked through his underwear. He dragged himself up to rest against the lip of the tub and he trailed red in his wake. He turned the water on. Desperate to wash it away.
The thing. It had said he had a womb. It said he would carry its seed.
Simon looked at his stomach. Flat and innocuous, not distended and warped like in his head. He could almost still feel it. The weight of it. The way the blood had sloshed inside. Dread turned his stomach to knots. He was cramping again.
Simon didn’t want to, but he needed to know. He took a deep grounding breath and tilted his head back against the tile. He dropped a hand between his legs and rubbed his fingers up against the gash.
Simon gritted his teeth and reached further. Dipping his fingers inside. They slid inside easily.
Simon’s breath caught. There was a channel inside him. Soft and wet and slick from blood. Simon clenched and his walls pulsed around his fingers as if it wanted to suck him deeper.
Broodmare, the thing had called him.
Simon curled his fingers up and a frisson of pleasure shot up his spine. He whimpered and dug his nails into the flesh in punishment. The pain settled him. He didn’t deserve to feel pleasure, not from this abomination carved into him.
Simon tried to pull his fingers out. A sharp pain stopped his movement. Simon gasped, breath heaving and horrified. He stared at where his hand disappeared between his legs, wide eyed and unseeing.
There were dozens of tiny, hard blades pricking into his fingers. They angled up and hooked into the flesh of his digits, preventing them from pulling out.
The wound. His hole. It had grown teeth.
Simon yelled and ripped his fingers out. Fleshy lumps of gore fell from it. His fingers were torn open in long thin lines. They smarted and stung and bled fresh into the iron and rot already clinging to his hand.
Simon reeled, panicking. This thing. The fucking eel. It was inside him. It had made him into a womb, it wanted him to bear its offspring. Simon felt dizzy.
No. NO! he wouldn’t let it! He wouldn’t let this thing have him!
Simon raised his fist, manic and crazed. He brought it down onto his stomach. He punched hard into his own gut. The pain was freeing. It was cleansing. It would drive the filth away. He brought his fist down again and again until he was mottled black and blue.
He brought his fist down until he could taste iron in his throat and his hole gushed out a stream of blood as if in surrender. Whatever was inside his..womb, he’d killed it. He had to believe that.
But it wasn’t enough. It still wasn’t enough.
The thing. If it didn’t take this time. It would fill him again.
Simon stumbled out of the tub. Sloshing water everywhere. It was a bright red now. Like the blood ocean.
His knees were weak. He crumbled to the floor and he didn’t have enough energy to push himself up again. So he crawled into the bedroom on his knees. He drew himself up to the nightstand and ripped the drawers open. Miscellanea that he had collected over his weeks in Erid scattered across the floor. Spare bandages and pebbles from the beach, a little human figurine Grace’s students had gifted him.
He rummaged inside and drew out his sewing kit.
He held the needle in his mouth and threaded it with shaking, trembling fingers. He should sterilise the metal, but he didn’t have time for that now. He had to act fast.
The Blood Eel had ripped a wound in him. He’d just stitch it shut again. It was just another injury. He had so many of those over the years that he’d lost count. He was covered more in scars than skin. This wound would heal too. Just like any other scar.
It was harder with one hand, but Simon managed. He leaned against the nightstand and brought his knees up, spreading his legs. He drew his hand down behind his balls. He shoved the needle through one ragged lip of the wound with a whimper of pain. He stabbed it through the other one and drew the wound closed, pulling tight. Simon shouted at the way his torn flesh stretched. He was crying from the pain and the tears clouded his vison. He couldn’t see very well from this angle anyway. He couldn’t see if he was doing it right. But it didn’t have to be pretty, it just needed to be closed.
Time passed in a haze of pain and agony. He didn’t know how many stitches he used. Only that by the time he was done, the wound was shut tight. The skin around it was stretched red and inflamed. He could already tell infection would soon set in. It didn’t matter. Simon ran his hand over the closed gash.
The thing couldn’t get to him now. It couldn’t fuck in deep and fill him up with its disgusting seed and force him to bear its grotesque children.
Simon was safe. He was safe.
The adrenaline that was keeping him going started fading. It itched and burned between his legs. He was exhausted. He wanted to lie down and sleep for years. But he couldn’t. The Eel. It waited for him in his dreams. He couldn’t fall asleep. he needed to stay awake.
But it was getting harder to keep his eyes open. Simon blinked slowly. The pause between each blink was getting longer. He fought hard. But he was so tired.
There was banging at his door. He’d only realised just now that it’d been going on for a while. He had been making too much noise. Grace had heard.
Simon mustered up some panic even in his fatigued state. He didn’t want Grace to see him like this. He was ashamed of the pathetic mess he had become. Grace was so bright, so good. He was a hero. Simon was wrong and twisted. He’d let himself turn into a monster’s whore.
“Simon! Are you okay? Please! Open the door!” Grace’s voice was frantic. He sounded like he’d been yelling for a while.
Simon crawled under the bed. He didn’t want to be found.
The banging had gotten louder, like someone was trying to knock the door down. Simon curled into himself. It was getting harder and harder to keep himself awake.
The door crashed down with a bang, light poured in. That was strange, Simon hadn’t realised it was night.
“Simon!”
Something clattered in, probably Rocky. Little shit had likely broken his door down. Footsteps rushed around the room, searching. He watched them from under the bed with bleary eyes. Grace ran into the bathroom and shouted. He stumbled back out, gagging.
“Grace! Simon under bed!”
He heard Grace thump down on his knees near him. A strong hand reached in and grabbed at his arm. Simon lashed out in reflex. It barely made contact, he was so weak.
Grace pulled him out and cradled him against him chest. “Oh God, Simon.” He breathed. He sounded like he’d been crying.
Simon’s head lolled around on his shoulder, his eyes slipped closed.
“Hold on, You’re gonna be okay.” Grace promised.
Simon didn’t believe him.
The darkness closed in on him. The blood Eel’s screeching laughter awaited him in the void.