Desolation (A Horror Short-Story)

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Somewhere in Africa at the dawn of humanity

Stoneheart, beset by hunger, he exhorted himself to go hunting, walking through the thicket to the place where the possible food of the day lies for him and his family, he knew that any mistake would mean that there’d be no food for that day, or even worse, his death. Any hesitation would lead his life to a sudden end.

That day's opponent wasn’t that easy and he knew it since the very first time, the wild boars were far above the average adult man in the trophic chain, his instinct for survival urged him to stay alert while he slowly crept up on his spear stick with quite uneven finishes. Looking at the animal face to face, it ran as it holds the spear firmly and pierces the heart of the wild boar with a blow so accurate that it didn’t give time for it to even emit violent guttural sounds of pain; for the wild boar, it was only possible to let out a choked scream. Stoneheart congratulates himself for a moment knowing that so many kilometers of travel were worth it and then he dragged his dinner.

On the way back to the cave, Stoneheart began to feel an overwhelming desolation, it had been about 20 hours since he left to venture, the twilight was already accentuated on the horizon and not even the nocturnal predators seemed to accompany him on the way back home.

Soon the desolation turned into a strange and pressing sensation, one that made him feel as if someone, or rather “something”, pursued him with a vicious desire to kill him. Stoneheart is put on alert and crosses hands as a kind of crude reflection that the primitives used to protect their bellies from the ferocious animals that lurked in both night and day. Stoneheart braces and turns peeks an elongated shadow that is slowly approaching to him, the night was already hovering on the horizon, the picture became increasingly gloomy and his range of vision was weakened with every second that passed, Stoneheart's mind did not stop thinking about all the dantesque scenarios that could surprise him in next minutes. Stoneheart knew he had to hurry, so he threw his spear towards the decrepit form of that thing, the stick went through but without making even the slightest scratch, Stoneheart only came to visualize a small and almost imperceptible emission of black smoke that came from the same point that his lance went through, the ghost only uttered recurrent drowned noises and interspersed murmurs that seemed to evoke a sort of ode to death.

Stoneheart ran wildly, rushing the air in and out of his lungs. The horrid thing followed the step turning everything in its path of a more opaque color, Stoneheart kept running as if it were the object of his existence, the thing was following him closely, but without wanting to reach him, it was almost as if it was enjoying his hunt. They reached the edge of a steep slope. Stoneheart saw that sure way of death as his only chance of survival. He took a leap in the dark. He turned his head towards the slope as he was falling into the void. The long and decrepit shadow was there, watching as one who makes sure that his work is brought to an end.

Sumer (3000 BC)

Priestess Fiana and the High Priest Hecamesh were enlivening that night's ritual, the acolytes filled with skulls and guts every corner of the vestibule to attract death and then honor their Mistress, but Fiana and Hecamesh knew very well that it was required much more than bovine sacrifices for tonight, shedding human blood was strictly necessary to invoke their Goddess and then appease the ominous spirit of that frightening entity too. Fiana held the neck of a lamb and with her dagger cut its neck and then she filled the chalice with its blood, and the rest of the meat was left to Hecamesh, which took the opportunity to dissect the belly of the animal and then extract the fetus that was inside. This night was propitious, the spirits were dancing between the two planes, they rejoiced with the feast they were performing for them. But Fiana and Hecamesh wanted to go further, calling simple spirits was a simple task and that honestly bored them, tonight they were prepared to attract a thousand-year-old entity that feeds on the desolation of helpless humans.

Just when the moon is at its zenith, Fiana brings in the main course of the night, a tribute of the most peculiar thing that she had caught: Enlil, a petty thief who was having fun with one of her prostitutes.

"I exhort you to serve as our tribute to Ereškigal, you better feel fortunate. I assure you that your ordinary soul will not find a better end than being devoured by our Mistress," Fiana expressed with a sober and ironic tone at the same time.

"Fuck you bitch. I won’t be the dinner of any demon. I'm leaving!" Enlil retorted exalted.

The acolytes restrained him and one of them hit him with a blunt stick, Enlil fell to the ground and then the acolytes dragged him to the temple.

Enlil woke up in a pantheon of immense proportions, his sight was almost nil in the penumbra that surrounded him, but something inside him told him he wouldn’t find the way out. Everything was dark, less a threshold in the distance; Enlil focused himself on reaching where that glimmer of dim light could be glimpsed. With each step he took, he could feel the sensation of anxiety taking root in his chest, but Enlil still did not understand the origin of the feeling. What was that peaceful and dark place that made him different from the places (tombs, temples, ziggurats) in the same conditions that he has assaulted in the past?

When he was already just steps from the threshold, a vortex in the void in front of him begins to distort his perception of the gloomy place. While he could feel insecurity growing in his heart in parallel with a desolation that confronted him with his situation of complete isolation from another living being. Two drops of cold sweat ran down his forehead down the length of his nose to his upper lip, while his eyes witnessed how his anxiety took substance and became palpable.

A sheep of gray wool with a haggard appearance emerges from the distortion that tore the faint panorama and spits out a bile of a black as dark as the tar with small pieces that resemble human visors, it has piercing eyes; whites like egg yolks, however, it wasn't eyes, Enlil concluded after staring at them for a few seconds, they had a viscous appearance that seemed to be constantly diluted. By legs, it had four rickety branches and among the little visibility, he noticed that it seemed that the already frightening sheep wasn’t touching the ground and merged with the darkness.

In the growing desolation that tormented the soul of Enlil, the strangeness of the creature, in spite of its unnaturalness, it was familiar to him in some way. Fragments of twisted memories arose from the most recondite place of his mind, images of a turbid childhood. An innocent sheep with its muzzle dyed red, and between its teeth, it was visible: bits of shredded flesh, while its best friend lay on the cold, so inert on the floor.

"What are you?”A hesitant Enlil asked as he backs away with insecure steps backward. "No... I know what you are, although I don’t know how. His voice got broken in this last sentence.

The sheep took a step towards him and then disappears into the darkness, just in front of his unbelieving eyes. Now he could feel the desolation and anxiety digging into his chest. He wanted to get out of there. He wanted to take that honey-colored and black-haired bitch that left him there to die and then spend the rest of his life with her and have some children. He wanted to feel the tender embrace of his mother right now once more. He wanted to scream and beg whoever it was: beast, man or god, to come to his aid.

Before the uncertainty from where the spectral sheep could appear, Enlil began to run in a zigzag. Clashing periodically with some stealth pillar in the darkness. He resigned himself to not trust his eyesight and closed his eyes squeezing his eyelids as he began to stammer some prayer to the gods he had heard from his mother a long time ago, he couldn’t remember it completely and it was interrupted by starting again in a kind of loop.

Enlil began to feel a sudden sense of emptiness accompanied by spasms that generalized throughout his body and chills that ran down his spine and bristled his skin. Suddenly Enlil opened his eyes and noticed that his feet were no longer touching the ground, he looked out of the corner of his eye under his feet and what he glimpsed is a deep abyss that no matter how hard he looked, it seems to have no end; an etheric fluid that at first sight seems viscous, but that to the touch, lacks substance, begins to drain in the body of Enlil from the head to the shoulders and consequently the torso, quickly becomes aware of how, apparently, while the disgusting liquid ran through his body, the myoclonias intensified more and more throughout his body, diluting all his appeasement and quietude.

Enlil probably took a minute or two more to realize what he was in, it was that glimmer of light that filtered through the jaws and the shattered teeth of a decrepit jaw, which clarified all his suspicions, the body expanded as much as if it were a constrictor snake and was already swallowing his very existence. By mere instinct of survival, Enlil gave force and sharp fluttering to try to tear the limits of that daunting darkness that seemed infinite, but it was too late, he could already feel like that something that gave life and being to his body was detached from his recipient The place where the sheep's stomach should be already convulsed and was about to expel him from the back, resembling human digestion, the inert container of Enlil slipped through the recesses of the body of that sheep while feeling how it was leaving behind the essence of his life.

The sheep emitted powerful drowned grunts that lasted for more than a minute until it managed to defecate violently Enlil's body, which fell on the ground and rolled a few meters to hit the wall, it was inert and rigid with a twisted expression in his face, the black bile continued to permeate his body and petrified all his skin almost to immediacy.

Fiana and Hecamesh entered with an expression that fluctuated between disdain, jubilance and horror. They watched the scene attentively and were pleased to know that they had given their people another year of tranquility.

Iraq (2018 AD)

Ivanna was investigating a fairly remote tomb on the outskirts of Warqa, the pantheon stretched for several blocks in the desert. Ms. Beauchamp was an inveterate archaeologist and an almost innate passionate about everything related to the culture of the first human civilizations, the historical richness of all the records that have been found of the Sumerian culture had always pleasantly marveled her, and the surrounding clusters Warqa hid many traces of the ancient glory of Sumeria, especially this pantheon in which she was investigating, which locals tell that it’s cursed, many had alerted her of the many legends that surround this ominous temple in which they practiced pagan rites according to religious currents.

While she was dusting off a chalice with a simple brush with the bristles quite worn from constant use, the cup seemed to be empty, but Ivanna quickly noticed a small drop of fresh blood at the bottom of the chalice. Ivanna speculated that it must be some sacrifices perpetuated by some pagan and conservative minorities who were still tied in the old ways, but deep inside she felt a very heavy desolation in the place and the anxiety began to generalize in her body. In spite of everything, the agnostic and skeptical temperament of Ivanna predisposed her to continue with her investigative work.

Ivanna went through a vestibule quite demolished by the passage of time, on the pillars were Sumerian writings that weren’t unknown to her as the good archaeologist that she was, a slight rumble is given in her heart to see how a line suggested the action "Infanticide". On the walls it could be seen bizarre images that to Ivanna seemed quite plump human figures in a fetal position, it certainly terrified her despite the self-control and sobriety that she always injected herself. She walked slowly as if trying to keep herself calm, but when entering a corridor that leads to a black door with irregular inscriptions (certainly, despite all her experience, Ivanna had never seen this type of Sumerian symbolism), a sensation that ranged from curiosity to terror invaded her and she couldn’t avoid finding herself, as if by mere inertia, walking through the gloom of the corridor, the darkness became so imposing that the light projected by her lantern, illogically, ceased to illuminate her surroundings.

She walked with insecurity, but with firm steps until the small halo of light that projected her flashlight, the alert of a small bulge that managed to peek on the floor, she quickly stopped her step so she assured herself to not to step on it, then hshe focused her eyes on the small body, straining between her lack of visibility, and she looked closely at the features of the fetus: glimpses of what would’ve been a beautiful brown hair child like hers, so tiny and fragile that she fell she could crunch it with just applying a small force, he was definitely what she had idealized so much just 1 year and 4 months before. Ivanna was so hurry to take him with great subtlety while contemplating with joy the sublimity of his beauty, her blue eyes like the ocean begin to weep when they witnessed a fact so unusual that, despite his strangeness, she hadn’t even taken the time to question. Ivanna was hypnotized by the little baby.

After some two or three minutes contemplating him with vivid joy, all her joy turned into horror at seeing how inside the translucent placenta, the amniotic fluid turned into a pestilent black, a putrid black slime similar to the water of the sewers. Ivanna felt a lump in her throat while the anxiety and the sense of desolation were devouring her from within, from her perspective beyond the present darkness, the whole stage became more gloomy and gloomy, she tried to dig in the placenta and then she managed to extract her baby from that nauseating fluid. She cradled him in her hands with so much love and care, and then she closed her eyes for a moment, took a breath of air and then hummed as she was singing a lullaby, but when she opened her eyes, she saw a mass of worms that were devouring the flesh of the baby until leave just a few pieces of necrotic flesh in Ivanna's hands, the horrifying image exalted Ivanna that much that she quickly liberated her arms and dropped the worms along with the rotting flesh that she was cradling, many tears flowed freely down her cheeks and some mucus came out from her nostrils.

The flesh and worms conglomerated on the floor giving to twisted and decrepit forms that evoked an anomalous fetus.

"If you love me so much, why do I cause you repulsion?" The thing whispered in a shrill voice.

Ivanna exhorted herself to face the harsh reality and then she replied:

"I honestly don’t know what the fuck you are, but you're definitely not my Alphonse! It was nine long months and one fatidic week more that he lived in my womb, but I resigned myself to accept his death.

The entity sat up and started running towards Ivanna, but she turned and ran with all her strength, hurried to the vestibule through which she had just passed and felt a powerful spasm in her abdomen when she heard a frightful guttural sound that the thing that haunted her very close was emitting, but Ivanna knew very well that if she wanted to survive, she would not have to look back. As she reached where the main altar lays, her right foot tripped with a scrawl and she fell to the ground with a hard blow to the head that made her bleed, her head wobbling, she forced herself to get up, but that thing cornered her and it was preparing itself very close to her, widened his jaw, inside his jaws she saw many faces with twisted and tormented expressions, all of them seemed tiny when they were seen at a distance from the abyssal depth that evoked the jaws of that entity.

Ivanna managed to sit up and stumble and then ran with long strides until she could see a light in the distance, –it's the exit –she thought. Taking strides much longer than the previous ones, Ivanna managed to get to the vicinity of the entrance and dominated by fear took a long jump but at the same time rough and then she fell sliding in the sand, looked back and sighted a more hopeful panorama: the thing wasn’t there anymore. She gives herself the time to take a breath, then she stared at the desert, so calm and silent, with her eyes lost in the horizon, he muttered for endless hours a series of words in Sumerian.

11 months later...

A group of researchers from the University of Massachusetts began to relate the series of patterns that were in the cyclic narrative of the famous archaeologist Ivanna Beauchamp, which it was determined that she was stating: "In the desolation of every living being, I will be waiting. I am the desolation in the first instance, I always have been."

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The image was taken from this source