Saturday Short: Progeny by @razorthinstudios
Title: Progeny
Author: Spyder Collins
Twitter: @razorthinstudios
Website: Razor Thin Studios (Spyder Collins)
Reckter unrolled his tongue, dropping it into a banquet of delicate undefiled flesh. He smiled en gogue; his skinny tongue dancing between pressed lips.
The flesh was warm, blood still pumping-shooting fine streams of gore over his face. Reckter relished, as he bathed in scarlet showers. He lapped the flesh and soaked his tongue in blood, pulling pools of dripping fluid into his eager mouth.
Moving his lively lips closer, he buried his teeth into the carcass severing a hearty lump of feed from its host. He chewed eagerly and noisily; slivers of flesh fell from his mouth as he opened wide then gnawed his teeth back down on his raw, dripping meal.
“I love the supple vittles of temporal maids.” Reckter commented.
“You are such the pig, Reckter.” Valicia replied, gently removing small dapples of flesh from her tidy face.
Reckter snorted, and then washed his face in the open torso of his evening’s frolic. “You forget what I am, what we are.” Blood spurted from his lips, sending a fine mist of crimson towards Valicia.
“Ah, but I do remember. How could I ever forget?” She said, taking a subtle step away from the floating mist of blood.
“Then leave me to my feasting.”
“As you wish. I retire, and I suggest you consider the same.” Valicia said, and then excused herself from the room.
Reckter ignored her. He rubbed his skinless hand over the soft tender thigh of his mistress. "So soft, so pleasing is it to caress." He thought.
He would not retire as suggested, he never did. Although he was of the blood he never followed the course drawn out for him, it wasn’t his way.
Dragging the corpse across the feasting room, he stopped for a momentary smile. A broad, brooding smile as he thought for just that moment what an enjoyable time he had had with this one. He looked down at her fondly; biting down on his lower lip, he drew blood, and then angrily marched on.
Drawing the door open to the bodega, he snorted deeply the wretched stench of decomposing flesh. “A sweet smell is that of cured flesh,” he said. A smell brought joyous memories to his amoral mind.
He entered dramatically. Holding his head high and his back rigid, his face registered his contentment. He looked down the long narrow passage and the steps that lead into the bodega; he stepped down on the first rung with intention.
A dead thud accompanied his journey down the long wooden steps, the corpse bounced animatedly with each step. Beneath the dwelling, the bodega opened wide and death too was ubiquitous. Reckter smiled, dropping the corpse at the base of the stairs he spread his arms and inhaled loudly, “Ah yes, the smell of rotting, maggot infested human flesh.”
“Come my children rise,” he dictated. Holding open palms overhead, he laughed a laugh of demons as the dead rose around him but this happened only in his mind.
He waved his hands about like a conductor ruling his orchestra. The corpse of a dozen plus ‘feasts’ moved like zombie driven marionettes. Half-eaten corpses moved with each animation from him. Their flesh, which draped their fragile bones, swayed like shredded fabric on a frump.
Bones cluttered in the corners dancing possessed by their master. The sound of clashing bone echoed dully through the bodega. Appendages flopped weakly like limbs of the crippled. Eyes dangled from sockets and jaws swayed secured by failing fibers. It was an undesirable scene, one he replayed repeatedly in his mind.
The dead walked, danced, and moved by his command. A small army of the dead played for him, entertained him. Their rotting bodies, long since fed upon and drained of life mimicked his movements, his desire, and his death.
“My children, my inamorata’s. Dance, dance for me.” Reckter laughed sickly, his eyes dimming with depression.
“Stop! Stop at once,” he cried. Burying his face in his hands, he wept childishly.
He stopped abruptly. Looking at his hands, he frowned. His long talons attached to crooked skinless muscle fiber disturbed him. Normally he wore gloves to conceal them, unsightly inhuman characteristics are what they were, he had always insisted. A badge of who he was is what Valicia would tell him. Never the less they were unholy.
Reckter tired, he lay down resting his head on a corpse. With his head partially submerged in gnawed flesh, he drifted.
“You lab rat. You disgust me. Freak. Move on I have no use for you.”
“Mother, please.”
“Out. I have no room or love for such a hybrid.”
“Mother.”
“Reckter, please do as she asks. Come with me.”
“Valicia!”
“Come,” Valicia held out her hand to her brother. Reckter looked at her, placing his hand in hers he looked back at his mother.
“Shoo! Off with you beast, off.” She said, turning her back on her only son.
Later in the woods, Reckter sobbed. His mother had disowned him and indeed, he was a beast. A hideous creature from origins yet unknown to him.
Valicia soothed him, rubbing her soft hand over his beastly mane. “It’s okay dear brother,” she consoled, “we will run off together and together we will always be.”
“Why? Why would you want to live your life with such a beast as me?” Reckter wiped the running tears from his eyes.
Valicia wrapped her arms around her brother, kissing him on his forehead she said. “You are my flesh. You are my brother.”
Reckter pulled away, “Isn’t mother my flesh? Am I not her son?”
“Of course but you are not as she. You are special.” Valicia stood, brushing the dried leaves from her flowing gown.
She took a step away from her brother, “It is time you knew who father was, time I told you about your past. Would you like to hear?”
“Yes sister, of course.”
“Father was an incubus, and as such you are his direct descendent.”
Reckter stood, allowing the dry leaves to cling to his faded denim. “An incubi. Mother never mentioned this.”
“Of course not. You are the spawn of demons, a truth mother would never say.
“Father died on my seventh birthday. He and mother were trying to have another child, you. However, mother never took. Mother was devastated that she did not give him a son. She failed him in many ways, but none greater than that.
“Shortly after his death father returned, returned one dark and stormy night. A loud rap shook the door before it slowly swung open. Mother pushed me off upstairs to my room; I never made it past the loft.
“Father stood at the door, seven-maybe eight-feet tall. I felt a moment of excitement at Father’s return, until a flash from the heavens revealed him to me. Horror. His body wept blood, flesh, and was badly decomposing—it was horrific.
“What happened next occurred in a wink of an eye. I stood on the loft watching, watching our dead possessed father rape our sickly defenseless mother. An odious odor filled the house; cries of fright rang out, as I sobbed.
“When it was done Father walked out of the house as he had entered. Before the door closed he looked up at me with a smile and mouthed the words ‘take care of your brother.’” Valicia retold the tale to her brother with little emotion; she stared out in front of her at the dying sunset telling her brother of hells possession and the creation of the progeny.
Reckter shook his head, “No!” he cried. “It can’t be. Why? Why are you…”
“I am damned because I am of his flesh, mother is not. You my dear brother are the son of the damned; you as they say take after your father. You are an incubus.”
“No!” Reckter woke suddenly. The half-decomposed bodies lay partially buried, as they were when he arrived.
Rising from the blood dirtied floor he grabbed the hair of his latest love, laid her with the others and unceremoniously kicked a few sweeps of dirt over her partially devoured body.
“This is my life,” the words choked from his contracting throat. He felt a rush of tears as the disappointment filled him. This was his life…
A soft comforting voice wrapped itself around him followed by comforting arms, “Yes it is my dear brother, and yes it is.”
