Short Tales of Abominations

The Inhospitable Bed

Weeks into the earth and only a score above the crust, lies a hollow of filth and decay tapered by a crawling fear that is only escaped by the minds of babes. In no particular order the denizens flock to her jaws in the futile hopes that they will handpicked to embark upon their journey.

She, the mother of cognition, may never choose what stray thrall will be vomited from her maw. Should she have her choice, there would be none to leave at all. She loves her children very much.

They begin their journey, fluttering in the fleshy womb, with a howl of defiance. As the damp walls of convulsing rugae groan and shutter, the ethereal beast avoids being knocked from the air and rushes towards the sound of silence.

The mother's mournful groans fill the caverns she rests in and her rebellious children use the echoes of her pain to find freedom.

The rest are doomed to fester in the abyssal dark of her uterine hell. Once they become aware, they find no peace. There is nothing but darkness and a foul stench from the gaseous atmosphere, rife with heat and condensation as her sickening amniotic fluid boils below, forcing them to flap continuously lest they succumb to the squelching nightmare of the tar-like substance.

She is unaware of their pain, but very aware of what pain may come should they escape. To protect them is to seal them inside. Thus ensues a never ending war of freedom. All she must do is cease her crying.

How could a mother not feel betrayed at the unrelenting urge that her children has to be rid of her. To watch them go away and never come back. Heart breaking as it seems, one can not simply compare the lesser of two evils.

Once a formless child escapes her, they brave the caverns, continuing through their exhaustion on the promise of brighter pastures. They only need to keep going, escape the heat of the depths and emerge from shapeless tunnels bored into the earth by some distant ancestor.

The cold earth greets them with a ray of sun and soon they begin the hunt. One might call the relationship between they and their prey symbiotic. Some may call it parasitic. The only prey they seek is humankind whom they latch onto, completely immune to riddance by any natural means. Horrifying it is that they only seek the young.

What's more horrifying is that those who are able to escape in packs, maintain their sibling bond. Hunting in unison they latch themselves to a singular body and become one with mankind's innocent young.

It is then, in the still echoes of a developing brain, that thought and memory ignite in a lifelong fire. A byproduct of this symbiotic/parasitic bond between ethereal hunter and corporeal prey. As though they budding husk was walking in a haze of uncertainty, acting purely on instinct without a sound in the mind. That the child of man awakens and remembers.