Page 69 of Decimation

He comes in, and he looks at me with those eyes that don’t see me at all. He sees her.

His dead fucking wife.

He touches me like I’m sacred, whispers her name against my throat, and for a few moments I’m not Leandra anymore.

I’m a ghost wearing my own skin.

And the horror of it, the true, rotting horror is that I’m starting to crave those moments because when I’m her, he’s gentle. When I’m her, his hands don’t hurt. When I’m her, I can almost forget what comes next.

But I always ruin it. A flinch at the wrong time. A sound he doesn’t recognize.

And then the illusion shatters, and he sees me, sees the imposter, and the punishment begins.

He hurts me, he violates me.

He carves his grief into my flesh until I’m nothing but a vessel for his rage. And the worst part, the part that makes me gag on my own despair is that afterward, when I’m broken and bleeding and sobbing into the mattress? Some small, shattered piece of me is grateful. Grateful that he’s still here. Grateful that at least I’m not alone in the dark.

I feel myself spiralling, losing the shape of who I was. I’m reverting back to that creature Isaac and Ezekiel made me, the one with no name, no will, no voice. I can feel her crawling up from the pit of my stomach, that hollow, obedient thing that only knows how to survive by surrendering.

But I can’t go back to that. I can’t…

The thought dissolves before I can finish it, and I realise I don’t have the strength to hold onto it anymore. The defiance that used to burn in my chest is just ash now, cold and weightless.

I’m so fucking tired.

Maybe it would be easier to just… let go. To stop fighting. To become her, to become nothing. The thought should terrify me but all I feel is a dull, aching nothing, like sinking into a lukewarm bath after too long in the cold.

I’m not her.

I know I’m not.

But I don’t believe it anymore.

“Where are you taking me?” My voice comes out small, swallowed by the close press of stone walls.

The air down here is cold and rancid, like the breath of something long dead. Konstantine’s grip on my arm is the only thing keeping me from tumbling headfirst into the void. I stumble, my bare feet slipping on stone slick with moisture, and he yanks me upright without breaking stride, without even looking at me.

The torch in his other hand throws dancing shadows everywhere, making the carved faces on the walls seem to move, to leer, to twist their mouths in silent screams.

“Konstantine, please, I’ll be better. I’ll try harder. I’ll be her, I promise, I’ll be Ines.”

The name makes him pause.

His whole body goes rigid, and for one breathless moment I think I’ve said the right thing, that I’ve found the key that will unlock whatever mercy still lives in his fractured fucked up mind. But then he turns, and the torchlight catches his face, and I see that I have made a terrible mistake.

His eyes are wild. There is no other word for it. The pupils are blown so wide they’ve nearly swallowed the iris, leaving only the thinnest ring of colour, and that colour seems to pulse, to vibrate with some feverish internal energy. The colours around him are a maelstrom of violent purple, sick yellow and a red so dark it’s almost black, all of it shot through with jagged lightning bolts of white that make my head ache.

“Ines,” he breathes, and the way he says it is not a response to my words but something else entirely, something I don’t understand. “Yes. Ines. My Ines. She’s been waiting. I know that now. She’s been so patient, waiting in the dark, waiting for me to bring her back.”

My blood turns to ice water. “What do you mean? I’m right here. I’m Ines. See? I’m Ines.”

I’m babbling now, the words spilling out of me but my feet are moving again because he’s dragging me forward. The stairs are ending, and we’re stepping into a space that opens up around us like a wound in the earth.

It’s a crypt.

Oh god, of course it’s a fucking crypt.

The ceiling vaults upward into darkness that the torch can’t reach, supported by pillars carved with more of those screaming faces. Sconces line the walls, and Konstantine moves from one to the next, touching his torch to oil-soaked rags until the whole chamber flickers with a sickly orange light. The illumination reveals stone floors worn to a polish, walls covered in frescoes that depict scenes I don’t want to understand, bodies intertwined, mouths open in ecstasy or agony or both. Blades, chalices and things that look like wings, and at the centre of it all, is an altar.