Poison in Your Blood

Chapter 4

The One True Being was the unofficial name given to the creature known to be everything and nothing, multiple and singular, by the cult she was born into. Although H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, xenophobic and other flavors of bigoted shut-in bastard, she was willing to give credit where credit was due in that his depiction of eldritch abominations, creatures that were beyond human comprehension, wasn't too far off the mark (they were and are popular in horror spaces for a reason). Like any Lovecraftian-grade cosmic abomination, to bear witness to The One True Being's unadulterated form with the naked eye you would go mad from the revelation that your knowledge of reality, what you once thought to be your reality and yours alone, was massively incomplete.

Compare it to the sensation a person feels when standing near a detonated bomb; your senses and body would crumble and then scatter alongside your sense of self. Even something as innocuous as a glimpse was enough to mentally eviscerate you, melting your brain and leaving an empty shell bleeding from every facial orifice. Think of a lobotomy but through supernatural means.

Memories of her time in the cult were clear. At the time she hadn't known it was a cult, none of the members had openly labeled it as such, and she didn't know a multitude of things about the world she was born into back then. What she knew was what the outsider kids she bunked with would whisper about when they felt safe enough to speak, talking about what they remembered of their lives before being taken to an isolated island. What she knew was what The Madame wanted her to know, punishing her or anyone else if they spoke about the outside world which was forbidden topic número uno. Free labor and sacrifices were the purpose of those who were abducted and those who were bred. To avoid suffering, you could join the cult if you wanted but not only was the process grueling (willingness to give up on relationships and material possessions, listening to every command The Madame would give you even if she were to tell you to slice off a sliver of skin and eat it, and complete adherence to the caste system), but you have to be a dedicated follower.

Obsessively so.

Becoming so broken that you were willing to lose what you were and be rebuilt as the price for reaching "true salvation". If there was a slightest hint that you were lying about your loyalties or letting them falter then you were done.

Members didn't wear hooded robes nor did they gather around mumbling hymns and worshiping statues like cultists did on television. They looked like regular folk. Not everyone had to be rich to join (it didn't go unnoticed that the most aryan looking ones were favored; she hadn't realized the social implications of that until she escaped and experienced the real world). The most memorable thing about them were the red eyes painted on their foreheads and over their hearts. It was to symbolize that their minds and hearts belonged to The One True Being. The sacrifices, not allowed access to fresh clothing unlike the cult members, also had these eyes painted on them, but covering every inch of their skin. Branded like cattle meant to be butchered and given away, not to those that were starving, but to the greedy percentage that wanted more.

Now she was the one doing the butchering.

Her dream, a compilation and bastardization of past memories and experiences, dispersed as her spirit was extracted from her resting body. It was a phantom pain that was no less excruciating to pain she would experience outside her sleep. It was as if the entirety of her body was splashed with a numbing agent before being torn from the inside out.

Outside her window was a crimson moon illuminating her dark room. Her ears were met with distorted noise as if an amateur was forced to edit together different sounds that they needed to make sound natural. An unholy mixture of high-pitched wailing, bubbling and gurgling, purring, giggling, and anguished moaning. Reddish black sludge seeped out every crack and crevice on the ceiling, connecting at the middle. With sickening squelches, eyes, a multitude of shapes and sizes, slowly surfaced and stared down at her, blinking at separate intervals. They were close to how her own appeared when her bloodlust was at its highest, but monstrous at a greater degree: white irises and lashes with hints of a silver glow, red scleras that had an almost liquid look to them, and triquetra-shaped pupils that extended past the irises. Tendrils squirmed and wiggled around those eyes.