Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

He was near the flashlight when the first rope descended. He could identify it by the thin thread of light running through it, like an electric eel darting in a dark sea cave. The rope danced hypnotically in front of him. He smiled and laughed; he wanted to clap, it was such a neat performance. The rope grazed his shoulder. He gasped. What a wonderful sensation. Indescribably lovely. His mind burst with colors. Flowers holding hues that did not exist in nature bloomed in his head.

This is Heaven , he thought rapturously. I must have died; this is my everlasting reward.

The ropes spooled down from above. Dozens of them alighted on his flesh; his mind expanded with wonderments so massive that he struggled to contain them all. The ropes lifted him up. He had never felt such a profound sense of love and tenderness. They hoisted him effortlessly, his body drawn to a standing position in the center of the chamber—the box . His legs hung under him, useless deadweight; his arms were also immobilized. He could barely move except to wriggle his torso a little, but it hardly mattered. He was safe and warm and loved.

Next: sounds from the far edge of the chamber. The moist shucking of a body across the stone. He stared around blearily, a kittenish smile on his face.

Where was that coming from? What was—?

It crawled through the flashlight beam. A baby…? was the only conception his mind registered. Something determinedly dragging its pulpy pink body across the beam. Flesher blinked, peering closer. Its body shimmered, and he saw a different shape entirely. Something that reminded him of a wet, wadded-up dish towel. Grub-like, but with a lean articulation of limbs up and down its body—the legs of a centipede. Fat and ribbed with skin that was not baby pink but a rotted-banana black, with seeping boils all over. Its eyes were pinned on the Reverend with a malignancy of purpose, a singular hunger, and a hatred deeper than human fathoming.

Then the shimmer ebbed and it was simply a baby again, chubby-cheeked and cute beyond belief. It humped through the flashlight beam, its feet pushing eagerly. He could hear it advancing toward him with a slick suction. A chill broke out over his body. He began to convulse in the harness of ropes, which held him in a gentle but stern embrace. He did not want that thing touching him. There was nothing in the world he could possibly want less. Better to let crows peck out his eyes; better to set wasps loose inside his mouth. Anything would be better than that horrible thing with its ancient shriveling stare.

Hell is a box, hell is a box, hell is a—

Something touched his naked calf. Now that he could feel. He tried to jerk his leg away, but it was useless. He couldn’t move an inch.

Nonononono—

The thing began to mount his leg. It skinned its way up gradually, as if savoring the ascent. Instead of a baby’s slack limbs, the appendages climbing his flesh felt more like a lobster’s spiny legs. Before long, the flashlight’s batteries would die. After that, the darkness would be total.

The thing was at his knee now. It was making loud sucking sounds like an infant hungering for a big fat tit.

Father must fill its belly , spoke a voice in his ear.

Being eaten wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Not in the grand scheme of things. It would be absolutely horrible, of course, to be eaten alive by the thing now licking its way up his inner thigh, pausing to tease the head of his dangling fear-shrunk cock; it would be excruciatingly painful to be eaten piece by piece, and the pain would amplify until he was driven mad with it, in all likelihood… but still, there would be an end to it. There was only so much of him to consume.

I have made the most terrible mistake , the Reverend thought.

Amos Flesher sensed this thing would do something far worse than merely devour him. Something that sat well outside the rational bounds of human pain or madness. Its feasting would be deliriously slow and torturous in a way that would eclipse all taxonomies of pain known to flesh or mind. All he knew was that the suffering would be immense and utterly lonely—trapped in the despairing dark, no way to mark the years as they bled into decades while this thing broke him down piece by relentless piece.

Please , he thought frenziedly. Don’t hurt me I’ll do anything be anything for you just don’t hurt me please God I don’t want you to hurt meeeeeee…

I will not hurt you , came the cooing reply. I will love you. You will be loved deeper than you ever imagined possible.

Love. Never in Amos’s life had a word held such a sinister undertone.

The thing was muscling around his hips now, moving toward the wide slice in his back. The Reverend thrashed madly, his dead legs slapping together to make comical sounds. The ropes held him in place. Their warmth and wonderments had retreated. They had become but dutiful tools of restraint.

The thing slipped inside his opened flesh. Teasingly so—inching just a cunt’s hair inside of him, as if wishing to savor it this first time. The pain was monolithic; his brain shrieked, every synapse shuddering. The Reverend squealed breathlessly; the sound fled up into the darkness to die. The thing was squirming inside of him rather energetically now, a birth in reverse; the Reverend felt his organs being displaced as the thing pushed doggedly inside—

Finally, its little feet sucked through the slit, which then closed over, the lips gumming shut on their own. The thing shuddered contentedly inside of him, its body flexing minutely as it enjoyed its new home.

For a long empty moment, nothing. Then: the smallest and most timid voice.

Let us begin, shall we?

MICAH COULD HEAR THE SCREAMSover the roar of the forest fire. They boiled out of the black rock. They were followed by silence and then—most chillingly—by a prolonged laugh.

“Did you hear that?” Ellen asked.

Micah nodded.

“The Reverend?”

“I suppose.”

They spent the night at the mouth of the cleft as the forest burned. The wind was gusting and the trees dry; Micah wouldn’t be surprised to hear that half the state had gone up. The heat intensified. They were forced to retreat into the cleft. It was much cooler inside the rock. Micah had a sense that even if the fire was raging right outside, it was always cool and wet inside this particular rock. He closed his eye, his eyelid lit by the mellow orange of the distant inferno. He hoped Minerva had made it out with the children.

The fire swept north and west the next day. Ellen managed to sleep for a few hours while Micah kept watch. The burned trees continued to glow until a heavy rain bucketed down. Columns of steam rose from the blackened forest floor. When the downpour cleared, they walked the wet sand to the edge of the forest. The tusks of what had been fifty-foot pines jutted from the earth.

“Should we start walking?” Ellen wondered. “We shouldn’t get lost, at least.”

“The fire could still be burning underground. In the tree roots.”

“Well?”

They agreed to set off before evening. They had no water or food; their lips were cracked and white, the first stages of dehydration. Maybe the well at Little Heaven had survived the blaze. They could draw a few ashy mouthfuls.

They had just set off when the air filled with the thacka-thacka of chopper blades. A search helicopter crested the western horizon, bearing steadily toward them. Ellen waved her arms. The pilot swooped low overhead, buzzing their position.

“He must have seen us,” Ellen said.

Micah nodded. “He will bank around and land nearby.”