Escape (1)
Just before her vision blacked out, her flailing fingertips snagged on an unfamiliar texture.
That nauseating residual sensation forcibly dragged her fading consciousness back to the surface. Her trembling eyelids snapped wide open.
It was one of the countless flesh masses binding her limbs. She had no strength left even to squeeze with her fingers, yet the alien feel of the surface against her palm remained vivid. It was clearly different from the other tentacle strands.
If the ones choking her throat and crushing her body were merely cold, stiff masses of muscle, then inside the thin flesh of this stalk a grotesque pulse was throbbing.
Thump.
Thump.
A heavy pulsation, as if she had seized an entire living, breathing heart in her grip. A dense miasma thick enough to raise the hairs on her scalp condensed and flowed outward, centered solely on that single strand.
The source of its power was right there in her hand.
Instinctively she scraped together the faint warmth that had lingered beneath her solar plexus. Raw spiritual energy, unmediated by any vessel, raced straight through her blood vessels to her fingertips. A horrific searing pain exploded through her as if charring her own flesh like charcoal.
"Aaaagh!"
With her palm glowing red-hot she ruthlessly clenched the pulsating stalk.
Sizzle!
The nauseating stench of burning raw flesh erupted. Inside her grip the heart-like beat thrashed madly, then rapidly withered away.
Kieeeeeek!
A tearing death cry that shook the entire building burst out through the pipes. At the same time the overwhelming weight binding her whole body crumbled away like an ebbing tide.
Her body plummeted helplessly to the floor and violently coughed.
"Kehek! Hah, kuh!"
Clutching the lungs that madly sucked in air, she forced her elbows and knees to move. She crawled across the wet tile floor, desperately crossing the threshold of the toilet stall. Behind her the remaining strands lashed at the floor trying to seize her ankles, but produced only powerless scraping sounds cutting through empty air.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the sticky aura choking her neck snapped clean. Beyond the boundary squelching sounds still lingered, yet no mass could cross over to this side.
Pressing her cheek against the cold bathroom tiles, she exhaled ragged breaths.
"Haa… haa…"
She barely raised her trembling hand. Neither the broken Shaman Knife nor the torn talismans were gripped in her bare hand. Only acrid smoke rose like a haze from her palm, which was burned bright red and oozing fluid. Her unfocused eyes merely stared blankly at her own body—the body that had burned away the beast's pulse barehanded, without the aid of any shamanic tools.
The talisman fragments that had lost their form and scattered were trembling faintly in the windless air.
She remained collapsed on the bathroom tile floor for a long time. Rough, fragmented air pushed deep into her lungs. Irregular breathing laced with a metallic rasp filled the narrow stall. Eyelids matted with dried blood and cold sweat fluttered minutely. Pupils that had gone white and unfocused slowly opened, taking in the dark stains on the ceiling.
It was the instant her consciousness barely rose to the surface. Before any visual information could even reach her mind, a tidal wave of horrific pain—as if her entire body were being butchered—crashed over her without mercy.
"Ugh… uuugh…"
A faint animal moan leaked through her cracked lips. Not a single finger joint, not even the tip of a curled toe, would obey her; the nerves felt severed. An overwhelming exhaustion, as if her whole body had been crushed beneath dozens of tons of rock, every bone and muscle fiber pulverized.
Once her breathing finally found a rhythm again, she laboriously raised the right hand that had been sprawled on the floor before her eyes.
A clear, hideous scar crossed the center of her palm. It looked exactly as if a red-hot branding iron had been forced against bare flesh. Large blisters had formed hideously over the purplish swollen skin, and the undersides of her nails were charred black like charcoal. Fluid seeped from the cracks in the blackened raw flesh, and with every pulse a nauseating throb of pain radiated outward. The acrid, disgusting smell of burning protein clung to her nostrils.
But the burn on her palm was only the preview of the agony still to come.
The condition of her lower body—directly violated by physical violence and forced mating—was pure devastation. Her lower abdomen and pelvis, which had been forced to accommodate an abnormal bulk, and the insides of both thighs, which had been wrenched open to their absolute limit—every one of those places was engulfed in a terrible searing heat as if molten metal had been poured over them.
The inner walls and mucous membranes crushed by the beast's merciless piston thrusts. The entrance, scraped raw by coarse keratinous ridges like sandpaper, shot pain like shards of glass gouging living flesh straight into her brain with every shallow breath.
The sensation in her womb—the deepest, most intimate sanctuary—was even more alien and repulsive. In the aftermath of having been forced to receive the beast's sticky seed, the blood vessels of the inner walls had swollen as if about to burst. With every beat of her heart, a dull, heavy spasm rolled up from deep in her lower belly in endless waves.
"Haa… heuk…"
She clenched teeth that had gone deathly white from loss of blood. The torn wound on her lower lip split open, and the metallic taste of blood wet her tongue. Somehow she squeezed strength into both arms, trying to push herself up from the floor. The shoulder joints that had been bound and suspended in the air like a crucifix for so long produced a sharp grinding sound, as if they would tear free at any moment.
Crunch.
Beneath the palm she planted on the floor, half-congealed slimy mucus transmitted a sickening texture. With trembling elbows she managed to lift her upper body halfway. Her blurred, wet gaze first fell upon the wreckage of her own form.
Her uniform, shattered beyond recognition. The full contours of her breasts, the pale collarbones, and the soft bare flesh of her side were completely exposed to the cold air.
"Ah… aah…"
She stretched out both convulsing hands with difficulty, trying to pull even the torn scraps of cloth over herself. It was a desperate instinct to cover her bare upper body and the lower abdomen that still remained faintly swollen from the beast's seed. But no strength would enter her finger joints. The fabric, heavy and soaked with thick saliva and bodily fluids, kept sliding helplessly down her slick skin.
It was not only her stripped body that stabbed at her shame.
Opaque white fluid still stretched stickily down the insides of her thighs—now gaping and robbed of all elasticity—and dripped onto the tile floor.
Plop. Plip.
The foul ammonia stench rising from an old sewer mixed with the metallic yet dizzyingly sweet odor pouring from the beast's fluids. The air inside the narrow stall was thick with a nauseating filth so dense she could barely breathe.
"Ugh, uweeeek!"
The moment the filthy visual and olfactory information lodged in her mind, her stomach contracted violently in revolt. She coughed while still face-down on the floor, but her emptied belly—already having vomited everything—produced only a trickle of bitter gastric juice. It was a terrible exhaustion that left her without even the strength to vomit properly.
Collapsed on the damp tiles, her unfocused eyes slowly turned. An old water pipe and rubber hose hanging precariously on the wall beside the filthy toilet came into view. She twisted her body almost crawling. Every time her mucus-covered knees scraped the floor, a stinging pain flared.
She stretched out a trembling hand and seized the rusted metal handle of the faucet.
Screeeech.
With a grinding of rusted metal the stiff valve turned by force. From the end of the hose a jet of water under rough pressure burst out with a loud tearing sound.
Splash! Whooosh.
Ice-cold groundwater struck her wounded fingers and burned palm head-on. The hair on her entire body stood on end from the bone-chilling cold, and a spasmodic convulsion ran through her. Yet she did not pull her hand away. She clenched her teeth until the jaw joints stood out white, then brought the cold water she had caught to her ruined lower body.
Urgent, irritable motions of her hands. She began roughly washing the insides of her thighs where the beast's traces clung thickest, the swollen outer genitals, and the blood-crusted tears.
Slap. Splash.
The cold current struck the hypersensitive mucous membranes and the finely torn wounds directly. A searing pain as if living flesh were being sliced by a razor blade raced up her spine all the way to the crown of her head. The flesh of her own body under her palm burned hot as if she had a fever. And the white seed that clung like leeches was so slimy and viscous it would not wash away easily.