Hymn of the Elder Gods

Nowhere Left to Go

Eve had a strange dream.

In it, she was walking down a paved city street, the heat of the summer baking atop her skin. Summer cicadas chirped in a broken symphony from the arid, urban planters and sparse treetops. There were no other people visible, only the shimmering asphalt and sticky humidity keeping her company. As she walked, the road seemed to stretch like gum between teeth, dragging out wider and darker, taking the sunlight together with it. Wrapped in night, the cacophony of insects was even louder than before, overwhelming in her ears, a cascade of desperate noise which flooded from the very shell of her ear through to her brain and suffocated any other thought.

She passed a food truck. On the side was an advertisement: a woman in a bikini, holding a coconut, with the words 'Fresh Juice!!!' emblazoned across her fruit. She was smiling, but there was an eerie emptiness in those eyes, an almost obsessive cheerfulness and optimism that was familiar. Eve ran a finger along the laminated paper. Did this woman, whose bare body was emblazoned and on display for passing eyes, know that her photo was there?

Something about that half-crooked grin told her that the answer was a resounding yes. That the stranger had been wholly aware of all the various ways in which her body would be manipulated. And that she had done it anyways, whether by choice or not, being wholly irrelevant.

It was more than Eve could say about herself.

The light of the truck swirled into a distorted mess of colors on the floor. Her feet wandered thoughtlessly towards the middle of the street, sidewalks disappearing from view altogether, just her, and the pitch black road, and the screaming bugs.

A pinprick of light appeared in the distance. Acting foolish - as most people do in their dreams - Eve waded through the night into its direction.

The little wave of thrill which rushed along the ground towards her, building beneath her ribs until her heart thrummed with desperate speed, was sickeningly familiar. The rubber soles of Eve's sneakers scuffed along the ground as she walked, a little faster, catching the scent of citrus perfume dulled by a recent rain. Her breath began to come in desperate little gasps, too suffocated to break into a run, and too desperate to stop walking. She inched forward, pushing as though running through water, and finally grew close enough to make out a shock of long, golden hair, rosy lips, a sly smile that caused her heart to ache. A red-gloved hand, raised in goodbye.

Eve reached for him.

Darkness swallowed the scene before Eve could make out anymore details - and it grew oppressive then - terrifying and familiar in a wholly different way, fingers stretching into obsidian emptiness.

She screamed, a short thing that wrenched the breath from her lungs.

Then she woke up.

Arman was there, looking at her with suspicious, judgemental eyes.

The man was lounging in the driver's seat of a car, one arm hanging casually out the open window and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Leather seats, marred by cigarette burns. They were in a Lincoln, likely the same one she'd nicked days earlier. Silent for a moment, Arman stirred, bringing the lighter up and flicking embers down to the ground outside.

They were still on the beach. Someone had laid her atop the reclined passenger's seat of the car, and there was enough sand stuck to her skin that Eve had to guess she'd been moved recently. She gazed questioningly up at Arman through the smoke. The man just shrugged, not even bothering to take the cigarette from his mouth before speaking.

"Wasn't sure if you were going to start breathing again or not."

"I....wasn't breathing?" Eve asked, quietly, not even bothering to move yet.