By Draven Copeland, Managing Editor
**CONTENT WARNING: This text contains disturbing, gory violence/body horror, sexual references, strong language, and suicide references**
Vague light flashed before Jackie’s eyes, ranging rapidly from yellow to orange and everything between, growing lighter and darker almost rhythmically. Tendrils connected to something larger hung over him, and he was forced to wait for his vision to focus out of unconsciousness to understand what they were.
The stringy branches of a willow tree flashed in what he slowly understood to be firelight, the shadows of the branches dancing and intertwining with one another to form a tapestry of darkness and light against the backdrop of the complete void that was the sky behind it.
He inhaled for the first time since he could remember, gasping in the smoky air but feeling a heavy pressure in his chest that kept him from breathing fully. He coughed blood out of his airway, feeling its warmth as it spilled onto his naked chest. His eyes began to roll from one side to the other, seeing huddles of people all around in various stages of undress; they stared at him with dark-rimmed, bulging eyes, their mouths curved into a sneering grin.
Jackie began to realize that he was leaned forward, the upper half of his body propped up onto a cool, rocky surface so that he was able to see and be seen by everyone that surrounded him in the dark hollow. Eve’s tattooed arms stood out in the crowd ahead of him, and as she smiled beside a thin, white-haired old man who was completely naked in the firelight, holding up a camcorder to his eye and watching through its viewport with a look of malicious delight on his lips. Darkness seemed to move behind them, as black, shadowy liquid seeped from the shoulders and outstretched arms of the large, thin creature Jackie had seen on Robyn’s phone.
Its head wavered back and forth, its sharp, pointed teeth reaching out of its dark gray skin, the upper and lower rows of teeth overlapping one another in a way that mimicked a Venus flytrap. Its mouth covered more than half of its humanoid face, which was characterized by pale iris-less gray eyes and pointed ears that extended bat-like from its skull. Nude men and women stood underneath its outstretched arms, slowly lathering themselves in the dripping black liquid, looks of ecstasy on their faces as they touched themselves and one another. The creature stared back at Jackie, a penetrating glare that terrified him into speech.
“Nostu,” he remembered out loud, to the avid enjoyment of the crowd. The creature’s head bowed down, but its bulging eyes remained locked toward Jackie. Pockets of whispered and excited conversation appeared all around and, to Jackie’s still-delirious mind, seemed to become circumambient, filling his eardrums from all sides and giving him a splitting headache.
The old man walked up to Jackie, filming him from varying angles and murmuring with excitement anytime he found a good one. He’d stay in one position for a second or two before he rapidly shifted to find a new one, never fully satisfied with his camerawork. As his sightline followed along with the old man’s movements, Jackie realized that he was completely undressed himself, his wrists roughly tied with twine to both sides of the rocky structure he was on and his ankles the same, spread open below him. Blood dripped from between the tangled windings of twine as he struggled drunkenly, rocking his head from side to side in an attempt to escape the headache. The wrinkled fingers of the old man’s free hand touched Jackie’s chest, prodding his ribcage and nipples while zooming the camera in on Jackie’s skin as he continued to wriggle in protest.
Something underneath Jackie’s skin moved. It pushed against the skin of his chest as it squirmed and slithered around beneath the surface, swimming down to his stomach and up to his shoulders before it disappeared into his intestines again. Jackie could still feel it pushing through his insides, wriggling down to his back and continuing to move erratically inside his body. It was the most painful thing he had ever felt. The old man smiled widely, his teeth baring in the firelight; his incisors were abnormally long and pointed, and black liquid dripped from his ruptured gums.
“Fuck…” Jackie exhaled between gasps and cries of pain. “What is that?!”
Eve was beside him now, her eyes bulging like everyone else’s. Without her makeup and now standing surrounded by her peers, it was clear that she looked almost identical to the rest of the townspeople. In the wavering darkness that the firelight fought feebly away, the only thing that seemed to differentiate any of the people in the crowd was their hair, their age, and their sex… and the latter was often unclear.
“Hi, Jackie,” Eve said. “You’re likely confused… you are an investigator, after all. It’s your business to know. And we can’t leave your investigation unfinished. So, I will give you an explanation for your death.” She smiled and nodded at him sarcastically. “I hope this is sufficient consolation.”
Jackie tried to retort in some way, but all that came out were heavy coughs of blood. Eve licked her lips, her incisors slowly growing out of her gums as her excitement grew.
“Where should I start?” she continued, glancing over at the camera.
The creature inside Jackie squirmed again, and he screamed in pain.
“How about we start with that? That thing is making its way through your insides, eating what it can and discarding the rest. Unfortunately for you, it’s even more painful than most we’ve had the chance to see. Those of you with vaginas have it a bit easier… and they generally come out better too. The women just have better equipment for this sort of thing, you might say. Their bodies are structured to support another being within them, making the process much less excruciating for the mother. And, on the bright side, the normal pregnancy process is often jump-started by Nostu’s propagation, making its offspring come out purer from them… less trouble blending the two species, you understand.
“Nostu is often happier with them… the offspring, I mean. Most births from you males end up… well, I guess you’ll find out, one way or another.”
Jackie yelled in pain as blood began to leak from the orifices in his lower half.
Eve gasped in amusement. “It’s feeding on you as we… or I speak. How quaint.”
“You fucking pieces of shit, fucking bastards, fucking–” Jackie gasped.
“Right on one account, Jackie. Our human parents never survive. We are, in our own way, bastard children. My mother didn’t survive my birth, just as you will not survive your child’s. I mean God, for your sake, I hope you don’t. I only hope you are alive for Nostu’s verdict.
“I mean, it might be of some solace to know whether your nosu child survives or not. We nosu are Insmith, now, thanks to donations like yours. We can’t have children of our own, and it can’t breed with its own children – I mean that would be gross, right?”
A baby’s scream broke her concentration. Even the cameraman looked over, his hands still holding the camcorder steady. Jackie followed their sightlines and could barely make out the gray-skinned toddler and baby that were being nursed under the dripping black liquid from the looming dark creature. Their adult siblings continued to lather one another in the dripping darkness, barely giving the children any attention.
“There they are, Jackie!” Eve shouted, waking him from his increasing delusions and garnering laughter from the audience both behind and beyond the camera. “The reason for your arrival – mystery solved!” She pointed at the toddler and the cameraman turned to film him as he crawled out of the downpour, laughing. “Angela’s one year old. You had her sister on your show, remember? They were so far removed from one another, we honestly wondered if Marie would even care. You’d be surprised how many don’t.”
She shifted her finger in the direction of the newborn baby, held in the arms of one of the seething nosu. “Robyn’s little brat. She’s already got quite the appetite.” She gripped Jackie’s hair and turned his head back to face her. “It is a shame about my dad, though. Now, with these new mouths to feed, was not the time to lose our main source of blood. You might think that being one of our blood bags is an uncomfortable, even painful role to play, but the mess you made in your pants earlier says otherwise… that, or maybe you’re just a little premature.”
“Fuck… you,” Jackie finally muttered after trying to form the thought with words for what felt like forever.
“Truth be told, Jackie, originally,” she nodded at the cameraman, “I was going to fuck you. But then I saw you up close and, honestly, I’d rather fucking die.
“And that’s just it, you see. The greatest threat to man is impermanence. We can fix that for you – in fact, we’re doing it right now.” She glanced up at the camera again, and its owner smiled widely. She looked back down at Jackie, her dark, wide eyes becoming swirling black holes in his deluded vision. “You just won’t be there to see it. As for your corpse… you’ll be useful at least, even after your death. You see, we nosu do not only drink blood… we revel in it. And you will soon be a fountainous source.”
The creature inside Jackie’s body pushed against his skin harder this time, to the point that some of his flesh began to tear. The creature’s form was clearer now, appearing almost insect-like under his skin as he watched it crawl erratically through his body. He screamed as Eve continued.
“Most people die without a reason, Jackie,” she was saying, sarcastically bowing her head. “My passing gift to you.”
Jackie groaned hysterically, only half understanding the words Eve was saying as his head rocked back and forth like a drunken pendulum. “Bella,” he muttered between vomits of blood. “She knows where I am. She’ll call someone…”
“She’s not here, Jackie. Didn’t that mean that she doesn’t need to know? Or did you change your mind?” Eve smiled menacingly, her teeth reflecting the blazing flame that he realized must be behind him. “Rhetorical, of course; don’t feel the need to respond. Your final moments are these, after all.
“To the public eye, of which we are aware she is a spectacle, she will quietly slit her wrists after you go missing. After all, she certainly has a history, and you are a cheating whore… and she knows this more than I think you understand. They always do, Jackie. And, luckily for us, you people kill yourselves all the time. You’d be surprised how little people care when they don’t have to see it happen. Suicide is such an emotional business… and it works every time we need a reason for someone who cares about our donors to suddenly pass.
“You’re happy and unafraid? Well, your friends just didn’t see it in you, and they feel sorry for themselves that they never saw the signs. You’re sad and anxious about the world? Then, your friends should’ve done more, said something sooner, because they could see it coming but were too busy with their own lives… their own shit… that they didn’t have the mental capacity to help until it’s too late. Or maybe they just didn’t give a shit enough. Who is to say but the ones that remain?
“And you, Jackie? You have no friends. You’re a deceiver. Not a single part of who you are to other people is real. The funny thing about it is, the more you do it, the more it works. You become a performance. Someone people watch for entertainment. For self-pleasure, in their own ways.”
“People… follow me…”Jackie was quickly fading now, the words he was able to get out slurred almost beyond recognition. “I’ve got… people–”
“You have subscribers, Jackie. 60 of them. You average less than 30 views per post. No one is coming for you.
“And so what if they did? It will need more anyways,” Evie looked back at the creature as it stood motionless in its darkness. The liquid that seeped from its body pooled around its clawed feet, crawling over the grass and rolling down the soft decline towards them. “Either it will birth more children through your people or it will be fed.” She looked down at Jackie as the creature inside him rummaged through his insides. “Any more questions, investigator?”
Before he had a chance to respond – not that he was going to anyway – Jackie was seized with excruciating pain, his eyes rolling back and his body convulsing mindlessly as the child inside of him burrowed into his midsection, slashing through his intestines as it headed for his groin. Nostu slowly stepped towards him, the old man swiveling with the camcorder and zooming in to film its approach. All of the townspeople let out gasps of excitement as they watched, caressing themselves.
“Nostu,” Eve said. “Nativiti Mortus Acquiesca.”
Jackie’s genitals erupted into bloody chunks as tiny clawed hands thrashed out from within him. His blood splattered onto Eve and the old man, spilling out of Jackie like a waterfall into a stainless-steel basin that was set below the rocky surface he was tied to. The clawed hands flailed wildly until they found purchase in the flesh of Jackie’s thighs, digging their long, pointed nails deep into his muscles as the child pulled itself out of its father, its head pushing through the gory exit it had created. It screeched raspily as it emerged, its teeth like blades as they chomped at the flesh and meat it had torn through, and its unseeing, bloodshot white eyes rolling as they bulged from its humanoid skull.
The townspeople watched, laughing and cheering. The old man held the camcorder steady, its red light reflecting in the wetness of the child’s eyes as it thrashed back and forth, clawing and gnashing as it worked its way into the world. Eve licked her lips and touched herself as she watched the torrent of blood continue to spill into the metal basin.
Black saliva spewed from the child’s mouth as it screeched again, its claws now digging into the cartilage of Jackie’s knees as it made its final pull, splurting out of his fresh corpse with chewed and lacerated entrails following behind it. Its father – its true father – was now looming over the scene, hunching its massive form under the branches of the tree. With its own skeletal, clawed hands, Nostu grasped the child by the throat and lifted it up, bringing it to eye level and staring deeply into it. The child continued to screech and thrash, its claws scraping and digging into the arm of its father.
Nostu exhaled deeply as its jaw began to slowly unhinge, its head rearing back as its teeth grew longer and sharper, its mouth opening so wide that it seemed as if there were no other features on its head but a trap of bared, predatory teeth. Its long, black tongue swayed wildly in every direction, clicking wetly against its teeth as the black liquid that seeped from its body now spilled from its broken jaw.
“I told you male births don’t usually work out,” Eve said to Jackie’s corpse. He did not respond.
Without warning, Nostu’s mouth slammed shut onto its child, severing the infant’s head from its body. Black blood gushed against its face, filling its lidless eyes and dripping down into the basin, mixing in with the dark red. It slowly unhinged its jaw again as the blood continued to spurt, Eve and the old man catching the spray in their mouths and on their naked bodies. With the next bite, it swallowed the rest of its child whole.
There was a moment of hesitant silence as Nostu’s head tilted slowly downward, staring at Jackie’s glazed and motionless eyes. Its jaw began to drop again as it knelt down, sinking to the ground and grasping at Jackie’s legs. In one motion, it violently tore the legs from the twine that tied them to the sides of the rocky structure, screeching gutturally before it began to pull Jackie’s corpse into its mouth.
One massive bite at a time, it consumed him, its long, skeletal arms pulling what remained into its gaping mouth before its jaw crunched shut each time. The camcorder did not stop running until Jackie was gone.
