Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

hiding that name to give it up so easily. My reflection grew angry with my stubbornness and she balled her delicate hands into fists and she pounded the mirror. Her mouth opened to scream her rage, and it became a great gaping maw filled with rows of broken teeth and a great lolling tongue.
“Speak your name!” she shrieked in a voice that stabbed at my ears.
“Do you really think that a few cheap parlor tricks will make me buckle?” I snarled back. “I am over two thousand years old! I am endless in a world full of endings! You cannot do anything I cannot endure! Be gone!” I flung a dismissive hand at the enraged creature and turned my back on her.
The sludge covering the floor had risen to a foot in depth. It rippled and churned with the turmoil of unseen beasts hiding beneath its surface. The filth stopped at the edge of the carpet, as if there was a glass partition keeping it from spilling over into the bathroom. I saw a great roping beast, like an eel made from dead, rotting flesh. But the eyes were horribly human, blinking maliciously in the brief second that it made itself known.
“Rebecca.” Shaw’s voice was low and strained, as if he was afraid that he would draw the beasts to him if he spoke to loudly. He was fully clothed and standing on the bed with his revolver held at his side. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and started to verbally assure him, but I was interrupted when Shaw’s expression suddenly grew cold and he lifted the revolver and pointed it at me. Stunned, my brain jabbered hysterically in an effort to explain or excuse his abrupt betrayal. Had Shaw decided that the insanity would end if he put me down? Or had he succumbed to some whispered promises that I could not hear? Why would he take me out now, after he had done so much to keep me safe and mobile? Perhaps he was taking advantage of my immortality, and he planned to shoot me in an effort to keep my secrets from my enemies. Even I cannot talk with a bullet in my brain.
I stared down the barrel of his gun and waited for the bullet to strike. Shaw’s face grew slack and lifeless, and then he pulled the trigger. In the close confines of the room, the revolver echoed off of the walls like a cannon. I jerked with anticipation as my ears pounded with pain and heat sliced my left cheek. I heard the sharp snap of breaking glass and then the crash of mirror falling from its frame. Confused because I was not wracked with pain, I gaped at Shaw.
“Take one step to the right.”
I took four steps to the right. Shaw pulled the trigger again and I looked for Shaw’s target. My reflection was crawling out of the mirror when he shot her, and she lay on her back on the floor. Her legs were splayed awkwardly from her fall from the sink, with one arm was stretched toward me and her long fingers twisted into claws. The lids of her eyes drooped lifelessly and the purple orbs beneath the thick lashes gleamed like cheap glass in the weak light. I stared dully at her and knew how I would look if I died.
Dread seized me and held me where I stood. For the first time in my life, I could consider the idea that my body could lay like so much meat, exposed to the elements to eventually rot away into nothing. Tears of despair and true fear choked me, and I finally understood what it was that mortals feared. It wasn’t death itself that frightened them so; it was the idea that there was nothing else in the Great Beyond once their flesh was gone. It was a terrible burden, and I wondered how so many billions have managed to live under such an appalling yoke.
“Rebecca.” I turned to the sound of Shaw’s soft voice. The muck had stopped flowing, as if the reflection’s demise had plugged the flow of power into the room. The fires dwindled around the window and door, and I could swear that the walls were scabbing up. Shaw stepped gingerly off of the bed, holding the revolver so that it was not aimed at me, and he held out his empty hand. “Let’s go find a safe place to sleep.”
Stunned by the morbid revelation I had endured, I nodded dumbly and turned for one last look at the corpse. The dull eyes suddenly flared open and the limbs twitched. Startled, I jumped back and watched in horror as the thing twisted and contorted its slender body until it stood upon its hands and feet like a deformed dog. She snarled and then leaped at me like she had springs in her joints. Strong hands seized my arms and yanked me out of her path before she could reach me.
Shaw held me tight against his body as the creature zoomed by and landed in the muck with a thick sucking sound. Thrashing and howling, she rose up like a rag doll held in the hand of a cruel child. Her arms hung loose at her sides and her head flopped sideways against her shoulder. She grinned maliciously at us as her head straightened with sick popping sounds.
“Speak your name, and you may have peace.” Her voice was not my voice. It was like breaking glass being torn through a howling cat. She laughed as she flopped about the room, then set to twirling maniacally with her arms spread wide. “I offer you eternal peace! You have only to speak your true name!”
“NO!” I wanted no part of what the monster had to offer. I’ve heard enough stories about deals made with demons and how terribly they can be twisted. Besides, I craved no peace. It’s boring and I had no need for it until now.
The creature stopped spinning and glared murder at me. Her eyes bled from purple to glowing yellow and I felt…odd. I had the sensation of being pinned into place like a bug on a specimen card. Even my arms would not move so that I could cover my eyes with my hands. I could only remain standing where I was with my unwilling eyes looking forward to the horror before me.
Behind me, I felt Shaw jerk like he had been slapped and his fingers dug painfully into my upper arms. I made a whimpering sound as he held me tighter and tighter and his fingertips pressed into bone. He trembled violently and his breathes came in harsh, ragged gasps that blew warm gusts against my ear.
“No.” He hissed, shaking his head so that I could feel the soft tickling of his hair against my cheek. “Stop it.”
The creature’s head turned this way and that, as if she couldn’t believe his response and wondered at it. Her yellow eyes grew large until they bulged from her eyes sockets, and the sludge flowed away from our ankles to slowly cover her legs and hips. The mess enveloped her rest of her body quickly to seethe and bubble gruesomely around her. She never took her eyes off of us as she was consumed and they glowed with the sharp contrast of the black surrounding them.
Shaw moaned in despair and began a mantra of “No, no, no”. He wrapped his arms around me as a father might do to protect his child, and hugged me tight to his chest. Still deprived of movement, I got to watch the creature undergo a hideous transformation.
A pair of massive, twisted wings with ragged feathers burst from the oily cocoon like a gruesome bug and splattered clear goo against the walls. The rest of the muck fell away in thick, wet clumps that returned to its fluid state and spread across the floor. The rest of the beast emerged as an enormous screech owl, standing several inches taller than I and fat enough to eat me for its supper.
“Dear God in Heaven,” Shaw called in a cry for mercy from his faith rather than a blasphemous curse of horror. Before I could truly comprehend what it was I was looking at, the owl whipped one twisted wing and struck.
I felt like I had been punched in the chest. My body went rigid and I felt the terrible pain of my shattered sternum. I opened my mouth to scream, and found that my lungs had been punctured and I could not breathe. I was jerked away and my back hit the wall with a bruising thud that stole my remaining strength from me. I slid limply down the wall and sat uselessly in the swirling muck.
It might have been my compromised lung function, or hallucinations brought on from the pain wracking my body, but what I saw next defied reason. Shaw let out a bellow that I’d last heard on battlefields swarming with barbarians. He rushed the glowering owl and barreled into it, using his broad shoulders as a battering ram. His arms wrapped around the beast in a wrestler’s hold as the beast snapped at his neck and shoulders with its curved beak.
He managed to stay out of the bird’s reach as he swung the animal around and tried to drive it to the floor. The bird greatly outweighed him, and so he only managed to throw it off balance. The creature buffeted him with its wings, struggling to be free of the man and then kill him. Shaw let out a cry when one long, spindly leg appeared out from under the grotesque body and raked his belly with his claws.
Shaw thrust the owl away from him as the skin of his belly separated in three ragged slices and he bent over his wounds in agony. The owl tottered a few steps and lifted its terrible wings in a posture that was as ungainly as it was ugly. It lowered its head low with its ratty tail feathers fanned as it circled Shaw in a predatory dance.
Gasping with pain and shock, Shaw straightened as much as his wound would let him and moved with the beast, always keeping it at his front and watching for it to attack. The bird lurched forward, opening its great hooked beak wide to bite and break bones. Shaw threw his arms up to ward it off, his tattoo a great emblem of color that suddenly sprang to life in a white blaze.
Blinded, the owl shrieked and cowered behind its wings. Shaw ran forward with his fist raised, and he delivered a mighty blow to the monster that drove it to its knees. The bird cried out again, and Shaw thrust his hand and arm through the wings to make contact with its skull. The thing let out one last shriek and collapsed onto the floor and was still.
Suddenly I could move and breathe. I looked down to find my shirt covered in my blood and a hole in my chest that was rapidly closing. Gasping and dizzy, I thanked whatever god would listen for my immortality and that I had not been allowed to die in this wretched place. I fought to get to my feet but found that my legs were not