Thorny Love & The Collapsing Museum

"That's thirty thousand points! Any further bids on this fully stuffed masterpiece?"

The Curator's voice circled her ears like a low, humming tinnitus. To Na-bi, though, it arrived muffled and far away, as if she were hearing it from the bottom of a deep tank. Every nerve she had left was locked on the biological catastrophe unfolding in her belly, deep beneath her navel.

A wet gurgle. A sizzling crackle from somewhere that should never have made a sound.

"Ah— kkhhk—"

Na-bi lay sprawled across the red velvet dais, coughing bloody foam from the corners of her mouth. This was not ordinary pain. This was the sensation of internal organs being pickled alive, a violation of every line on the human body's blueprint.

Moments ago, the enormous volume of semen the centaur statue had poured into her had mixed with blood and, riding the rupture in her uterus, spread through her entire abdominal cavity. Into a chamber of organs that should have been sterile, filthy, scalding, viscous filth had come flooding in. Her small intestine and colon floated in a pool of semen with a nauseating, impossible foreignness. Every time her stomach and liver touched that hot liquid, a chemical-burn agony — as if hydrochloric acid had been dashed across them — set the whole of her belly on fire.

It's so hot... my insides... they're melting...

Her abdomen was swollen like a pregnant woman's — no, worse than that, distended into something grotesque and wrong. The abdominal wall had been stretched so far the skin had gone nearly translucent, and beneath it dark-red dying vessels writhed like earthworms. Each time she gasped, the fluids pooled inside her sloshed and slammed against her diaphragm.

"Magnificent! Look at the curve of that belly!"

"You can see the contents sloshing — it's packed to the brim!"

The audience transmuted her agony into art and hammered their shutters. In the stuttering glare of the flashes, Na-bi watched turbid fluid endlessly pouring from between her torn legs. Her uterus had already ruptured and leaked into her abdomen, and still so much had been forced into her that it was backing up and overflowing.

Then a faint tremor rose through the floor. Not footsteps. A heavy resonance, as if the building itself were screaming.

The Exhibition Hall's massive iron door crumpled like a sheet of paper and came flying inward on a thunderous crash. Through the boiling cloud of dust, an indescribable stench arrived first — rotting corpses, mold, the black mud of a sewer.

As it rolled in, it began chewing through the mannequins at the entrance without discrimination. Bone crunched. Joints popped. It smacked and swallowed.

"Kyaaaaah!"

"Stop it! Security! My pieces!"

The auction floor became a slaughterhouse in a single breath. Spectators fled. Plaster statues charged to intercept the Janitor. A cauldron of pandemonium. Not one soul spared a glance for the broken doll abandoned on the dais.

She knew it in her gut. Now. If she missed this, she would become a permanent fixture of this place.

"Move... please... move..."

Na-bi planted her shaking left arm against the floor. She tried to stand, but her lower body was no longer hers. Between the ruptured uterus and the bleeding into her abdominal cavity, everything below her waist had gone numb. Her legs hung the way someone else's meat would hang if it had been strapped to her — dragging, useless.

There was only one thing she could still do. Crawl.

She hooked her fingers into claws and drove them into the dais's red carpet. Nails snapped. Flesh tore away. With nothing but the strength of her arms, she hauled her torso ten centimeters forward.

"Khhhk—!"

The moment she moved, the hell in her belly churned again. Semen and blood sloshed heavily through the abdominal cavity and crashed over organs already burned raw — as if she had filled herself with broken glass and boiling water and then shaken the whole container.

With every inch she gained, turbid fluid still leaked from between her torn legs. Behind her, a long, viscid trail unspooled across the carpet like a snail's slime, rank and gleaming.

She threw herself off the dais.

The impact of the fall slammed into her ruptured belly. Light detonated behind her eyes. The floor was a litter of broken plaster and mannequin shards, and she crawled over those edges on her stomach. Every time her paper-thin abdominal skin scraped across glass, terror seized her — the contents of her belly were going to split her open and come out.

She could not stop. Behind her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Janitor's chewing — crunch, chomp — was drawing closer.

"I have to... live..."

She crawled until her elbows were scraped raw enough to show bone. The only thing in the world was the shattered glass door far ahead.

Then a whistling tear through the air. In its rampage the Janitor had seized a massive object — a mannequin torso with the upper half ripped away — and hurled it like a cannonball.

Na-bi turned her head. There was no time to dodge.

A wet, crushing impact. The flying debris struck her side and her swollen belly at once, as if a truck at full speed had found her on the floor.

Her small body left the ground.

The problem was her belly. Packed with fluid, it heaved under inertia with a violence that was almost obscene. In the instant she became airborne, the semen and blood and viscera inside her surged toward the opposite side of the blow, shoving against her peritoneum as if to rip it wide. It was the same physics as kicking a water balloon filled to bursting — the liquid slamming, the surface warping, everything threatening to split.

"Grrrk—!"

She flew perhaps three meters and hit a corner like a sack of wet meat. Dark-red blood sprayed from her mouth and her nose at the same time. The impact snapped further ribs that punched into her lungs, and the bleeding in her abdominal cavity grew worse. The world spun. A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠single high tone filled her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ears. Everything flickered between black and white.

She should have died. For any ordinary living thing, ruptured organs would have meant instant death.

Na-bi opened her hazy eyes. In front of her stood the revolving door — the same door where she had earlier cut a Hound in two. In the aftermath of the Janitor's intrusion the glass was shattered to grit and the frame was twisted like pulled taffy.

I have to get out...

She scraped at the floor again. Even lying on her stomach was impossible now. Her belly hurt too much; she had to writhe on her side like a worm. Her broken right arm dangled and swept the ground. Her paralyzed legs dragged behind her like cargo.

Broken glass covering the floor sliced across her forearms and thighs. Blood welled from the cuts, but she had no room left to feel it. She shoved her head through the gap in the crumpled revolving door.

It was tight. Her upper body made it through. Her belly — swollen taut with the centaur's fluids — caught on the frame.

"Ah... ugh... no..."

She wailed and pulled at the floor with her arms. Her belly jammed, compressed. It was going to burst. The fluid inside felt as if it would reverse up into her mouth. She tried to inhale, to suck her abdomen in even a little, but a stomach packed not with organs but with foreign matter would not shrink.

Behind her the monster's roar was closing in. In the end she twisted her body and forced herself through.

A wet tearing. A shove. Her abdominal skin scraped off against the sharp frame with a sound like peeling fruit, and her body popped out the other side. The skin of her belly had been stripped and was weeping fluid — but it had not ruptured.

"Hah... hah..."

The lobby's cold air touched her fevered skin. Outside the Exhibition Hall. She had escaped.

She could not rest. Through the broken gap, the screams from inside the Exhibition Hall leaked into the lobby, and this place too was a hunting ground for the monsters of the so-called Safari. Stay in the light and you die. They would catch the scent of her ruptured viscera and come swarming.

She had to hide. To keep the things that would follow the smell of her own blood off her trail, she looked for the nearest cover. Over in the corner, sitting in the dark: a large steel dumpster.

She crawled again. Her elbows and knees were scraped so raw that white bone showed, but the terror of being eaten if she stopped kept her moving. A single meter felt like ten kilometers. From between her legs, blood and semen and shreds of torn inner wall still streamed, proving what she was — a living lump of filth.

At last, the narrow space behind the dumpster. A dark, filthy gap between the wall and the bin. Na-bi crammed herself into it.

"Hnn... hhk..."

She tried to draw her knees toward her chest, to curl into a fetal position. Her tautly swollen belly made it impossible. Unable to straighten her legs or bend them, she had to lie on her side in an awkward, half-folded sprawl.

The smell of garbage stabbed her nose — rotting food, mold, sewage. That nauseating stench felt like perfume now. She prayed it would mask even a little of the blood-reek and semen-stink coming off her own body.

With a trembling hand she wrapped her belly. The foreign sloshing inside. The raw sting of her torn lower half. In the darkness she wept without a sound, covering her mouth so that nothing would escape.

The convenience store lights ahead still felt impossibly far. But she had survived. Organs ruptured, body packed with foreign matter and ruined — and still, she was breathing.