John Everson - NightWhere

He put his foot on a step at the foot of the table and crawled above the woman. “I’m sorry,” he said again and again as he positioned and pressed himself inside her. She was warm and wet. Lubricated by her own blood. As he pushed his body against her, the blood flowed faster from her belly, and Mark’s own stomach was quickly coated in the sticky warmth of her blood.

“Make her yours,” Damia urged. “Take her deeply.”

Mark stared at the black-painted breasts and the red snake cut below them and felt his cock respond to the horror in a way he would never have guessed. He was incredibly hard now, and his motion increased as he surrendered to the primal act. The woman groaned with each thrust, and soon Mark’s own moans joined hers, and he let go, spasming again and again until he was gasping for breath.

When at last he pulled back, the blood had smeared across all of her stomach and chest, washing much of the black paint away. He could see the true color of bloody, tan skin beneath the crimson.

“Get her a doctor,” Mark demanded.

“There is just one more thing you must do,” Kharon said. “Stand and wash her clean.”

“Give me a washcloth then,” Mark said.

There was laughter.

Kharon shook his head. “You were washed clean by all of us not so long ago. You have the means. Use it.”

Mark knew instantly what he meant. He shook his head. “I’ve done enough.”

“Her defilement is not complete until you have shown her how low she is to you. Worthy only of being your receptacle. Do it now.”

“I want to see Rae,” Mark said.

“When you finish here,” Kharon said. “Not before.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mark whispered.

“Not here,” Damia laughed. “I told you that.” With her hands she pushed him to stand upright above the bloody woman on the table.

“Wash the night from her,” Damia said. “And she will be reborn to NightWhere.”

Mark struggled to do as they demanded. But nothing came. He remembered all of those times he’d stood at a urinal and been flanked by men on either side and found it impossible to go…and sometimes had left without doing anything, only to return five minutes later.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus. And eventually…he felt his tubes open. When at last he released, he opened his eyes and watched his penis dissolve the black paint from the woman fully. It washed away even faster than it seemed it should have, until the woman on the table was no longer painted in anything but her blood and Mark’s piss. Kharon walked to the head of the table and untied the burlap sack from around her head, as his helpers released her arms and legs.

“I promised you that if you completed the three levels of NightWhere, you would see your wife once more,” Kharon said. “Here she is.”

Mark looked down in horror as Rae’s face stared up at him from the bloody mess he had made of her body. Her brow was creased in pain, but there was a trembling smile on her face.

“Oh my God, Rae, I didn’t know.”

He dropped to his knees and put his hand on her hair. “I would never have done this if I’d known it was you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “That’s why they covered my face. I wish that I could have watched.”

He leaned down to kiss her. She allowed him, but did not respond.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “Let me take you out of here now. You need a doctor.”

Rae shook her head and pushed Mark to lie down on the slab. She rolled herself on top of him, gasping with pain as she did, as fresh blood oozed out all along the circle of the NightWhere snake.

“I’m not leaving here,” she warned, her voice hitching in pain with each word. She ground herself against his crotch, her eyes rolling back in her head as she did. She gave out a handful of guttural moans that were as filled with anguish as pleasure. To Mark she sounded hideous, but when Rae finally focused and looked down into Mark’s eyes again, she smiled.

“Thank you, baby. I have only one more trial to pass before I can go into The Black.”

“What is that?” Mark asked.

Damia stepped forward to the table and helped slip two white gloves over Rae’s hands. When the hermaphrodite stepped away, Mark saw that each of Rae’s fingertips ended in silver. The gloves had claws.

Triangular, razor-sharp blades. As the weapons registered, Mark felt hands grab his ankles and wrists.

“This is the fun part I was talking about earlier,” Damia said. “I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

She gestured to a dark corner of the room, and a figure stepped forward. Mark could have sworn she was not in the room before. “This is the Night Mother, our Midnight Queen. Yvonna,” Damia said. “She has been waiting for this for a long time.”

Yvonna was beautiful.

And horrible.

Her skin was black as pitch; Mark couldn’t tell if she’d been painted as Rae had been, but she looked just as strangely black. The thrust of her nipples was only slightly less dark than the midnight of her skin. The sign of the snake was tattooed on her midsection in the same way that Mark had carved it into Rae. But the image of the snake repeated itself over and over across her cheeks and forehead and arms and legs. Tiny snakes were visible on her eyelids and when she raised her hands Mark saw that even her palms were scored with the snake.

Mark struggled briefly against the hands that gripped him, and Damia continued speaking as Yvonna stepped closer. Damia reached up to stroke Rae’s cheek.

“Her final trial is that she must have sex with your corpse and take your death seed inside her as she feeds your life to Yvonna,” Damia said. The playful lilt of her voice no longer sounded filled with wry humor. She was unsmilingly serious. “Corpse seed will be Rae’s danake -her coin-to enter the door of fire and truly belong to the night.”

Yvonna smiled, revealing ice-white teeth that shone strangely against the black of her skin. She looked like some kind of denuded demon covered in dark symbology.

Rae flexed her steel-clad fingers and smiled down at Mark’s face.

“You always said you’d give your life for me,” she said, her voice a playful whisper. “Well, honey…now I want it.”

Breaking Dawn

Mark looked back and forth between the sigil-covered demon-woman, Yvonna, and his blood-spattered, demonically grinning wife. He wasn’t sure how she could even be kneeling upright with all of her wounds. He could see the pink coils of her intestines through the slit in her belly. Yet she was not only upright, she was menacing. Rae reached down with her forefinger and drew its blade across his chest. She didn’t press, yet instantly a line of crimson welled on his skin.

“I won’t take too long, I promise,” she grinned, moving her legs to straddle him, getting in position for the fuck of his life. And death.

Mark made a sudden lunge with his hip, knocking Rae off balance. She gave out a cry of pain as her wounds gaped open. She fell to her side. As the Watchers were distracted for a second by Rae’s fall, he yanked his right hand out of the grip that held it, slamming the Watcher hard against the edge of the table with his sudden pull.

As the Watchers grabbed at his arm to restrain him again, Mark wrapped his fingers around the dagger that he’d used on Rae. He swung it in an arc across the side of the table, slicing arms and hands that reached for him. Rae grabbed him around the neck, trying to pull him down. Mark looked up once at her eyes, and saw a woman that he had never seen before.

She looked hateful. Murderous. The love that he had once imagined in her face was completely gone. She only wanted him for one thing.