NightWhere

Chapter Twenty-One

Waking Up

The blood made her feel strange.

Rae woke and it was everywhere. It dripped from the ceiling. It flowed in a slow wave across the floor. It rolled down the walls in a quiet, steady drain. The air stank of rich, wet iron, and when she woke, its warmth moved in a humid fog all around her. When she sat up, the blood on her back grew instantly cold.

Rae shivered.

The last thing she remembered, someone had been whipping her. But it had gone farther than that. Men had come to her with knives and dipped their points in her breasts. Women had pressed things that hurt between her legs and laughed as they’d acted like men, pantomiming sex with her.

Someone had slapped her across the face with a board, and even now Rae could feel the throbbing from that hurt continue.

But now…

She looked around, propping herself up on her hands. Everything was red. Even her. The blood coated her body; she wore it like a translucent veil.

“The beauty in sadness is you,” a voice echoed through the room.

“What do you want?” she asked, watching the blood flow all around her, licking her flanks as it slid by. She wanted to move, to get out of its way, but it was…everywhere. And she had to admit that its touch, if gruesome, was warm.

“I want you,” the voice said. A faint laugh. “And I seem to have you.”

“What is this place?” she asked. The room glowed with the heavy light of death.

“The Red is just the entryway,” the voice said. “You can stay there if you want. And you’ll have blood and pain to your heart’s content. This room…is the divider.”

The voice grew silent, and Rae rubbed the congealing blood across her naked breast with one hand, trying to scratch an invisible itch. It felt as if she were coating herself in cooling jelly, and instead of stopping, once she had finished scratching the itch, she continued to massage the blood against her skin. The image of Countess Bathory in a bath of blood flashed before her eyes, and Rae now understood that woman’s hideous obsession. She was reveling in it now herself. It looked obscene to be coating her body with blood with her hands. And yet…it felt amazing. Evil and decadent.

“Divider between what?” she finally asked, picking up the conversation again.

“Between The Red and The Black,” the voice said.

“The Black is why we’re really all here. It’s where you can become one with the Night Mother, the Midnight Queen, and really transcend. Pain means nothing. Pleasure means nothing. All that matters is that you still can feel…something.”

Something then touched her back, massaging the wet warmth into her shoulders. Rae felt her hair stick to the fingers, which slipped up and around her neck, matting the hair further.

“Stand up,” the voice commanded.

She did, and the room suddenly seemed smaller. The ceiling was just above her head and the walls just a couple feet away. Rae stood in a cube the flowed blood from all six sides, and the voice encouraged her to touch it.

“Feel the flow,” it said.

“Touch the life as it flows by. That warmth…was someone…”

She did hold her hands to the ceiling and took a deep breath as the crimson slipped around her fingers and dripped down her arms.

“I can feel it,” she said.

“Then you may soon be ready to pass through,” it said.

Rae looked confused. “Pass through?”

“Indulge in the blood, become one with the life flow and you can walk through the curtain,” the voice said. She realized, finally, that the man sounded like Kharon.

“Pass through to what?”

“To The Black,” he said.

Something about the idea of joining him in a darker place excited her, and Rae slipped her fingers between her legs. They were well lubricated. She imagined a pile of dead, gutted corpses stacked above the ceiling of this room, contributing to her strange blood bath as she enjoyed its stickiness against her sex. How evil this was, to have so much blood flowing like a river, and to bathe in its scent and touch. She was not grossed out or offended by the death that slipped around her from all sides. Oh no. She found it exciting. And as she thought about the death of those who’d contributed to it, and the fact that they were now lubricating her middle finger, she gave out an involuntary moan of pleasure.

The voice all around her began to laugh.

“I have chosen well,” he said.