In the Belly of the Beast

40

As her foot crossed the threshold, anxiety ate at Abby like a gnawing pang of hunger.

"You're exhausted," the lady was saying. "Come inside and rest."

She was drawn into the house like metal to a magnet. 

Suddenly Abby was drained. She had no energy and struggled to walk to last few steps to the table where she collapsed into the chair.

What is wrong with me?

There were reasons, urgent ones for coming to this place, she was sure, but her mind was a foggy muddle, and the residue of answers floated in her consciousness like the aftertaste of food just eaten. Try as she might, it was impossible to remember what had been happening and why she was in this particular house.

A small boy entered the room. He looked to be ten to twelve years old. He was silent, unnaturally quiet, and vaguely familiar, and she tried desperately to remember where she had seen him. 

With his back against the wall, he squatted down to watch the scene play out before him. His big blue eyes took in everything.

Her mind refused to work. Perhaps she had known him from somewhere, she pondered.

In another setting? Another life?

A blinding pain shot across her eyes. As she sat at the table, the reel of a greater reality began to roll inside her head. Like a monumental motion picture, scenes played out before her.

Other lives, long past, and stacked one upon the other in a towering pile, uncountable, they stretched infinitely back into eternity. Mere glimpses of humanity. The misty breath of a thousand-million souls.

A revelation wonderful.

A secret horrible.

All too much to bear.

She felt the inner seams of her being threaten to rip apart, to break and give way against the relentless tide of images that filled her mind like the raging crush of a flood-swollen river. 

She peered over the precipice of sanity into the chasm of madness.

***

The man sat across the table. His eyes bore into her. She felt him reach inside her mind, a soft gentle stroke. It jolted her as from a deadened sleep like the snap of a window shade opening to brilliant light. It flared like a signal shot into the night and was gone. He withdrew from her mind.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine," Abby replied.

Her eyes were lifeless. Glazed.

"Will you keep her?" Ruby asked from somewhere far across the other side of the room.

"No," he said. "She is like the boy, ready to be used if she is needed."

He smiled.

"It was almost too easy", he explained to Ruby. "A devastating emptiness fills her. She was ripe for the taking. She's all mine now. Perhaps we will need her, perhaps not. We shall see. If not, I will take care of her and the boy, as well."

He looked at Ruby, his eyes glowing with madness.

"It's time to check on our little project in the back room, my dear. Come, let us see if he is ready."

***

Ruby followed him down the corridor. Abby sat meekly at the table, but the boy stood and proceeded to tag behind the two adults. Each step brought Ruby closer, to what, she did not know. 

An unexplainable feeling of anticipation filled Ruby as they neared Geoffrey's door. A physical change was blossoming inside her, a change she could no longer deny.

***

At first, she'd thought it a dream, an impossible and unimaginable fantasy beyond her wildest hope. Her beauty had returned, her youth restored, and she feared she had but to awaken to the cruel reality of her former life - hopeless, wretched, old, dying. 

It would have crushed her soul, a nightmare beyond all nightmares from which she could never recover.

But it wasn't a dream or some cruel trick. It was real.

He came to her in her dreams, fulfilling her as none before had ever done. She was sure he would exact his price, in some horrible and unforeseen way, but she would pay whatever he demanded.

 However grotesque, however steep, she would gladly pay. Life had taught her that much. There were no free rides.

And even if a trace of fear should danced across her thoughts, she had only to look in the mirror to reassure herself that whatever price he exacted, it would not be enough. Nothing could be enough to repay the stranger this miracle he had given her.

It was her second chance at life.

***

They stood at the closed door, and he softly whispered into her ear, "Open it."

She felt the cold knob in her hand, smooth and hard. Her milky skin grasped its roundness, and she turned her wrist and twisted it.

"Here, my dear, is your fountain of youth," the man explained. "As long as it lives, you retain your beauty."

"And how long can it live," Ruby asked.

"Eternally," the man breathed. "Its self-sustaining."

Ruby tossed her head back and laughed.