by Jason Yates
Pale mountains shifted in the darkness in a quiet earthquake, water rippled around her as she rose. Her flesh was luminous in the odd light, seeming to glow from within, but on closer inspection, it was more likely because of an odd fungus that grew on it, making the surface of her skin appear greasy and vaguely cheese-like. The stench was amazing, the stench of the sewer, that luminous fungus, of whatever horror that nestled and grew in her prodigious folds, in her gently shifting waves of fat.
She brought her thick hand to her face, touching it softly with nails the color of black and green marble. Her hair hung in greasy tufts from her head, it hung over her face like black straw, shielding her features, drifting across her face as if to hide her one beauty, her strange lavender eyes, that glowed from the rolls of noxious meat that formedher face. Those eyes spoke of a woman that was beautiful once, a kind woman perhaps, a good woman. Her hand traced the lines of her face until they came to her thin, liver colored lips, and they parted, revealing three teeth, and only three teeth, long, needlelike, two on the top, one dead center in the bottom.
"Maiandra," he whispered.
Her eyes didn’t shift his way as she absently sluiced the filth from her flesh, for a vague moment ashamed of her ugliness, but she was Nosferatu, and she knew, her ugliness was her shield, and her shield was strong.
"What?" She asked, moving slowly across the chamber she nested in to the small collection of personal objects she kept on the ledge. She picked the silver mirror up, even older than her, and peered into it, absorbing the odd joy her hideous smile gave her.
"Custus wants to see you," the boy said. She would always call him ‘boy’ though he was the better part of a century old. "He misses you."
"You keep coming, Chibam, and you keep asking, and I keep saying no. Why?"
The child-thing smiled, his emaciated hand slowly caressing the centipede that crawled over his pale, narrow chest. It was huge, over two feet long, its hard black segmented carapace glittered like a string of ebony pearls, its many feet like tiny blood red spikes as they undulated over his skin. It sank its mandibles into Chibam’s shoulder and began to draw sustenance. It was his, and its poison could kill a large man in seconds. "He asks. I do as he says."
"And why won’t he come?" She turned to look at him, and he looked into her lavender eyes with pleasure. He realized they were the first beautiful things he’d seen in over a month. Their world was steeped in ugliness, that was how it should be. His oddly huge, hairless head tilted slightly on his terribly thin neck, and he smiled his many toothed smile at her.
"You said you didn’t want to see him. He honors that request. But he hopes you’ll change your mind, of course. Love amongst the uglies is a rare thing, sweetie. You should treasure it."
She looked away, looking again into the mirror. "No, Chibam. Don’t come here to ask me that question again."
He nodded. He would never understand her anger. Custus had given her a great gift. She had fallen in love with his illusion, the false face he wore to please those around him, and when she discovered his horrible truth, she wanted to flee, but he gave her the gift anyway. He embraced her, taking away her beauty but pledging to love her anyway, as she would learn to love him.
But she did love him, and that was the pain. They had been apart these decades, one loving the other, but unwilling to show it. She would not forgive him. She no longer hated him, she no longer lamented her lost beauty, but he had condemned her to an eternity of this ugliness, and she would condemn him to an eternity without her. It was a small punishment, but one at least she could enforce.
Chibam shuffled away, extricating the centipede’s mandibles from his flesh and moving it around his waist, like a belt. It dug in with its sharp feet, burrowing into the cool dampness of his dead flesh.
She watched him go and smiled. It would be time to feed soon, she must do so before Custus left the sewers, so that they couldn’t meet by chance. She would not allow him to see her, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the city, to leave his presence, because of that useless amputated love.
She dropped the mirror in the water, perhaps to find it later, perhaps not. She did this often, but always ended up scrabbling for it on her hands and knees later. It was the mirror he had used to reveal her new face, as her flesh bloated and her teeth fell from her mouth. "You’ll get used to it," he said. "You’ll come to love it."
She didn’t believe him, she didn’t accept it. Of course, he was right, she did learn to enjoy it as he did, with that odd lust for the grotesque, that freakish need to shock and horrify. She liked it more than the false airs of life, of the tight corsets, the high collars, the stiff rules and silly manners. Those things were gone now, she was simply who she was, but she had made a vow and she would keep it. He would not touch her again, he would not see her again, he would never again peer into the eyes he had valued so much.
She moved from her chamber, her bulk now lost to human sight, and drifted down the pathways of darkness with only her glowing skin to light her way.