I remember nothing, bobbing like a bloated corpse in the black waters of oblivion. I remember the hitch of the tether, drawing me backward to some godless place lit with vengeful colours. The nascency of despair is precluded by the hint of some noisome odour, a mephitic wisp seeping into the lethean veil of night between myself and something hideous. The lids of my eyes part apprehensively and shut again, I swallow a clot of some pharmaceutic dross that had been lingering in my esophagus. The first inkling of trepidation trickles into mind as familiar fixtures begin to manifest from indistinct masses of hypnopompic obscurity. For a moment I lay motionless in disavowal of sensation and awareness, though I can feel the filmy layer of grime and cosmetic residue smeared across my skin, and I can taste the staleness of the air. I push my face into the bare mattress and curl into a foetal position, my eyes flutter in the dead ugly light admitted through the slits of the venetian blinds.
Listlessly I rise from a welter of bedsheets bemired with a motley of crusty stains and survey the squalid space I'd recognized by now as my bedroom. A bituminous percolation is leaking through the ceiling of the southwestern corner of the room, running down the wall and gathering in a sizable puddle of resinous black shit on the carpet. The floor is littered with the usual evidence of indecency; liquor bottles, razors, prescription vials, switches, ligature, cut straws and little plastic bags. I notice among the sordid assortment a few items who's presence is distinctly more questionable, videlicet; a chisel, a pair of needlenose plyers, and a framing hammer, all three of these objects being bedaubed with an unsettling maroon substance which I surmised to be either hematic or faecal. The chisel even appears to a number of long dark hairs cohering to it's upper edge.
With my face in my hands I remain perched on the bedside for a time as I grapple with the notion of confronting the undoubtedly nefarious consequences of actions I could not remember. Through the space between my thumb and forefinger I spot something glinting conspicuously from out amidst a heap of celluloid reel and shredded pornography. At first I stoop forward, craning my neck and squinting my eyes, and then arise, cautiously, and make my way over to the twinkling object in two slow deliberate steps. I crouch down and sweep aside the clutter, uncovering a tarnished silver ring which ensconced what appeared to be a black opal. I stare at the ring intently, turning it over in my fingers several times as though momentarily captivated by the perturbing inferences that seemed to abide within the dimly reflecting facets of the dark oval stone.
A sudden flash of violence effervesces from the mnemonic gloom of my psyche, a fleeting outline of some enormity for which I am undeniably responsible. Within that infinitesimal instant I recall a nebulous white visage revulsing backward between delicate shoulders, concealed behind a thrashing swathe of disheveled hair, though as quickly as it had surfaced the image wriggles free of my prehension and retreats to some ulterior crevice of my derelict memory.
My abstraction is shattered by a morbid crepitation from somewhere in the room, followed by what sounded like the stifled whimper of an infant. A frisson of dread moves over me, in the resultant convulsion the ring slips from my hand, bouncing off the floor and vanishing into the space beneath my bureau. I look partway askance, pausing briefly as to overcome my reluctance to identify the source of the ghastly sound, before gravely directing my eyes to whatever it was that now stirred anxiously beneath the sweat-plastered duvet piled on the further side of the bed. Without averting my gaze I reach unsteadily outward toward the framing hammer, and feeling my knuckles tighten around it's helve I slowly stand and turn to face what awaited me. I lean over, and taking a corner of the duvet I draw it swiftly back to reveal something I deeply wish I'd left undisturbed.
A macilent humanoid torso with taut jaundiced skin quivered atop the writhing body of a great caterpillar, it's bellied segments bulging in a sickening undulation. It was female, judging by the pendulous dugs that swung from it's emaciated ribcage, an odious hybrid of harridan and larva muttering to itself in the mindless titters and chirps of a lobotomized imbecile. The long spindly limbs of the upper body terminated in clawlike, three-fingered extremities, though pairs of vestigial appendages continued down along the bloated lower portion, the final segment of which bore a putrescent, distended orifice leaking a tepid stream of effluvium. The back of a trembling cadaverous head, sparsely overlaid by wisps of ebbing white hair, rises into view from betwixt the creature's protuberant scapulae, and moaning mawkishly the abhorrent hag-worm turns to present a countenance of immeasurable ugliness.
Amygdaloid black oculi glistened in shriveled narrow slits, leering out above a cavernous oral fissure that bore no teeth, rather a jagged ridge of yellowing bone dripping with vile secretions. From out this monstrous breach issued a foetor like that of rancid grease, the foulness of which scours my senses causing me to stagger back and clasp my hand to my face. I open my mouth as to scream and thereby douse myself with the vomit waiting therein, the framing hammer slips from my hand as I fall backward and slam my head against the bureau. Everything goes black, my awareness recedes to the throbbing pain that grips my skull and the malodour of festering grease churning in my brain. I remain incapacitated for some time, counting fifteen seconds before I can open my eyes, whereupon I was greeted by the horrible face of the hag, which had by now squirmed it's way off the bed and begun to crawl toward me, long thin streams of saliva dangling from it's lolling fetid maw.
The crooked beast pauses, mewing wretchedly, then reaches out in a spasmodic gesture, it's misshapen claw coming to rest upon my crotch. I shriek and kick it in the stomach, sending the creature careening backward several paces and causing a rupture at it's pelvic region from which gushed an eruption of ocher fluid and black-veined viscera. The creature squeals, beset now with terrible vellications that caused it to twist and shudder heinously, threshing about the fleshy vermiform cylinder of it's lower half and so spattering the walls with the copious discharge of the disgusting aperture situated at it's terminus. I bolt desperately to my feet and take a single stride toward the door before tripping over the jactitating abomination. I thrust out my arms to break my fall, my right hand lands inside the monster's gaping mouth, which snaps shut like a leghold trap, pinning my wrist between the serrated ridges that lined it's jaws. Instinctively I wrench my arm away, badly excoriating my right hand before flinging open the bedroom door and diving into the hall. I bang shut the door with a resonant crash.
The corridor is torrid, bathed in a blaze of incandescence which has nigh dispelled all semblance of shadow, it feels as though I'm standing at the entrance of some daemoniac furnace. The sulphurous air buzzes with a strident electrical monotone, and the heat is so permeant as to threaten a spell of deliquium. For a moment I struggle to maintain consciousness, nodding forward and catching hold of the doorcase to prevent myself from collapsing. The mechanical whir invades the syncopic languor beclouding my mind, and I follow it back into visual reality. With my eyes all but closed and my arm raised to my face as to occlude the hellish light, I turn around to peer into the adjoining room and so behold a spectacle of extraordinary morbidity.
Several canular halogen lamps are suspended from the ceiling via thick orange cables, and the whole space is aflare with the glow of these infernal devices. The furniture has been torn to pieces, save for three large chairs placed about a great ebon refectory table which now dominated the room. Upon on each of the chairs abode a most unusual guest, the three of them forming a picture born of the perverse imagination of a demented genius. The first of these, seated to the right, was seemingly anthropoid guessing by the contours of the heavy blood-smeared tarpaulin by which it's entire body was enshrouded. Moreover it's drooping head had been thrust through the bottom of an ornate wire birdcage, which the figure now sported as a sort of peculiar helmet. Across from this mantled anomaly is what appears to be a naked human male, positioned upside-down, with it's trunk concealed beneath the table. The legs protrude rigidly toward the ceiling, frozen as though mid-sprint, this opposed to the respectably sized member with which the body was endowed, hanging listlessly earthward, almost reaching the navel. As freakish as these oddities were, their abberance is eclipsed by the third of the trio, stationed at the rear of the table. Presiding over the whole grisly scene was a giant fish, the size of a man, propped up in the chair and bedecked in the ecclesiastical raiments of a prelate.
The bizarre ternary sits motionless about the table, provisioned as it was for such monsters, as upon it's surface lay indeed a veritable feast of the damned. A repulsive selection of rotting offal, disgorged meat, and mouldering crustaceans lay haphazardly strown across the tabletop, attended by a host of circling flies and swollen maggots. Halfway excarnated skeletal remains provide harbourage to a number of frolicking rats, while hundreds of roaches, chinches, and ticks batten and copulate upon dented iron plates of tripe and pulverized gristle. I recognize from amid the carnage the corpses of my pet cats, one of which has been completely dismembered, the other is relatively intact, it's body embedded with dozens of eating utensils. At the center of this gruesome banquet was a shattered ceramic amphora which had flooded the table with a concoction of blood, phlegm, and bile, all of this sizzling and singeing in the evil glare of the blistering lights.
I stand spellbound, paralyzed with repugnance, gaping fixedly at the grotesque display sprawled out before me, till my attention is diverted by a tumultuous creak emanating from the attic. The ceiling at the further side of the room suddenly sags and then gives way, precipitating a great mass of stinking viscid offal onto the floor with a nauseating splash. Aghast, I lower my eyes slowly downward as I vainly contend with harrowing implications of the reality in which I found myself inexplicably environed. As horrific, abominable, and absurd as my world had so abruptly become, I could not deny that it was equally, inscrutably, familiar. What had happened here? What blasphemous depths of atrocity had been so fervidly dredged but hours before now? At that instant the roiling darkness of my reminiscence is jolted once more by a coruscation of fragmented imagery, the lights, the table, the fish-bishop and the twisting of the she-worm, these scenes flash before me only to vanish upon failing to assimilate into consolidated recollection. The savagery and sacrilege, the horror and mania, I somehow knew all of this, it was capsulized in a single notion, a single word which wavered at the end of my tongue. My heart sinks as the realization occurs, and my vision moves gradually up from the floor to the rear of the room. Spanning the entirety of the wall was a tattered gray curtain, across which was indited one word, scrawled in ash..."PERDITION".
From behind me erupts then a piercing ululation, and I spin about to see my bedroom door buckle violently outward with a percussive thump. I glance toward the staircase, though before I take a step another thunderous knock resounds from the window above the landing, which has been crudely boarded up with three splintering planks. I tarry in the hall as my mind races to no avail, bewildered as to a course of action, when the planks nailed over the window at the landing begin rattling under a continuous battery of raucous banging. The bedroom door then buckles once more under the force of the next assault, the ferocity of which wrenching the lower hinge from the doorcase. Stricken with panic, I rush through the open doorway of the bathroom, slamming it behind me and wedging a conveniently located chair under the doorknob.
The humidity of the bathroom is immediately palpable, everything is covered in a thin film of condensation as though hot water had been left running for a long time. I turn to find the medicine cabinet has been ripped from the wall and hurled into the bathtub, which was filled to capacity with turbid brown water. The traverse rod had been dislodged, the shower curtain being draped over something, or someone, situated on the toilet seat. I glower at the crinkled sheet of sheer plastic for a moment, respiring heavily and pondering what awful surprise it must conceal. Steeling myself to the best of my ability I reach out and draw aside what was to be the cerement of a dead girl, or rather, what was left of her.
The first thought that occurs to me is how pretty this girl must have been, which is strange considering the effort involved in restraining the pressing urge I have to vomit. The body was finely proportioned, with slender limbs and long dark hair, beslimed as it was with the gore of a massive wound that had riven open the back of her skull. She is naked, save for a pair of pink and black argyle socks, and hardly an inch of flesh could be seen that bore not the barbarous evidence of torture, indeed the skin is so thoroughly ensanguined as to disguise the original pallor. The corpse's breasts were utterly ravaged, the nipples having been reduced to blackened extrusions of cauterized tissue. A deep incision extended from the vulva up the stomach, effectively expanding that feminine interstice to include the contents of the cadaver's abdomen, which had cascaded dramatically into the toilet bowl like some incarnadine cataract. Her eyes had been plucked from their sockets, one of them had been placed inside her open mouth, which was bereft of dentition, her teeth littering the linoleum about the base of the toilet. The tongue was likewise extracted, which I only noticed for the fact it was nailed to her left hand, and all of her fingernails have been broken backwards. I also notice that her brain has been scraped from her cranium and thrown into the waste-paper basket next to the sink, along with the traverse rod, which has been bent in half, and the toilet brush.
I look staidly upon the slaughter, contemplating the butcherly nature of the torments which the corpse had come to illustrate so explicitly. Despite the many vicious rigours employed in this girl's destruction, perhaps what troubles me the most is the gnawing suspicion that it is no stranger that sits martyred before me. I gaze into the hollows of her eyes as terrible reveries begin to flicker on the fringes of my consciousness. Leaning inward I gently brush aside the blood-slick tresses of tangled hair plastered to the cadaver's torn chest, uncovering a foreboding symbol carven into the flesh by three wide lacerations, it was the numeral "XI". With this discovery the diaphanous apparitions flitting about the threshold of my memory begin to rapidly inspissate, and I startle backward as an inundation of phantasmagoric iniquity bursts forth to belabour my shaken mind.
Falling to floor, I brace myself against the edge of the bathtub as the revelation unfolds before me as a kaleidoscopic nightmare. My thoughts are aflame with the glow of the hissing lamps, I see the fall of the hammer, the chisel in my hand, the turning of the plyers, agonized faces streaked red with tears. My head vibrates with the clamour of a thousand screaming voices, the timbre of their lamentations testifying to the perpetration of unspeakable crimes. I see myself, naked and profane, speak aloud the secret names of matter and death, and descend into Hell upon the coils of a great serpent. I have betrayed myself and killed my friends, drained my redemption into a daemon-womb and signed away my soul on a certificate of skin. In a single gesture of cardinal sacrilege I have cast down the pillars upon which the world was shored and plunged all of existence into an absym of unbalanced force. I am XI, the architect of his own damnation, and here so shall I languish in the absence of God.
