As I stood there gazing into the growing gloom trying to decipher just what it was I was seeing, a wave of dizziness overcame me. Staggering backward my leading foot caught on the edge of the low stone table and down I went like a sack of potatoes.
The impact was soft, likely due to the blanket of thick crimson moss that seemed to be growing everywhere around the small stone table. It smelt of rotting vegetation with a hint of something metallic. I laid there for a moment stunned and then began to chuckle at myself, “What a cluts I am. Thank God no one was here to seeee. . .” suddenly pain overcame me and my insides began to spasm. I went into convulsions and slowly curled up into the fetal position.
I lay there working my mouth in a silent scream, I just couldn’t draw breath due to the pain that racked through my body. It was most intense in the middle of my stomach, those muscles were constricted and not showing any sign of relaxing any time soon. All I could do is lie there twitching and gasping for breath. My eyes were tightly shut and every nerve in my body felt like it was set ablaze. I had never experienced anything so painful in all my life. Not even the time that I was shot in the kneecap during a hold up at a liquor store, but that’s a tail for another day.
Quite suddenly there came a feeling that I was not alone. “Sshhh, boi. Relax. Slow deep breaths.” The voice was distinctively feminine, yet, it creaked and was raspy, like the owner had smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for the last ten years, and it was garbled and nearly hard to decipher what she said due to a thick accent.
I groaned at the sound of the woman’s voice and tried desperately to open my eyes. She was aware of this, of course, and knelt down beside my twitching form and slowly caressed my shoulder. Her touch was rough, much like her voice, but I found an odd sense of comfort in it and I did as she gave an utterance to.
Slowly, but surely, I began to calm my breathing and take slow deep breaths. Finally the pain began to recede, and the tightness in the muscles of my stomach began to diminish.
I felt her touch fade away and I opened my eyes to see if she had left me. I begrudgingly began to sit up to look around and her touch was there again, pushing me back to the ground. I was amazed at her strength because she was a short, stout, and frail woman, likely in her late eighties. Her threadbare clothing and grimy appearance brought images to my mind of old witches that live in broken down hovels deep in the backwoods forests, the ones that appeared in the movies. A silly thought crossed my mind and I began to wonder where her black cat Azrael was.
She gave me a crooked smile and although I could plainly see that she was an aged woman, there was a strong youthfulness in her eyes, yet, those eyes spoke of a person that knew many things, eyes that have seen many wondrous and terrible things. That crooked smile was touched with a madness and I knew then that this woman was crazed, I could feel it radiating from her in fact.
“Who are you?” I croaked out my dry throat. She tossed her head back and cackled, yeah, this bitch was crazy. “Mora be my name, High Priestess of the Mother of All Abominations, my sweet boi.” Her hand shot forward as quick as a viper and she pressed the palm of her hand against my forehead. Casting her head skyward, she closed her eyes and spoke words that sounded like prophecy, “This night, the moon is the moon of Shub-Niggurath. This night the stars are configured in the shapes and patterns of the dark, old times. This night, if we call Her, She will come. If the sacrifice is worthy. If our cries are heard.”
I dared not speak, only lay there upon the ground next to the low stone table that I now thought was an altar to some strange pagan God. Her hand began to feel hot against my cool skin and sweat began to pour from my head in large droplets. Another spasm raked through my body, and the epicenter was deep within my stomach.
Lowering her head she locked her crazed eye upon mine, her hand sliding back to the crown of my head. “What you took here, boi, is a gift only bestowed upon the favored and the faithful. You life is now Hers, Her will be done.” She pushed me hard and I collapsed to the blanket of moss beneath me.
She stood and walked over to the altar and I followed her with my eyes. She took up the glossy rough chiseled black blade that lay there next to that infernal cup and started toward me, the knife held loosely in one hand and the other hand searching for something in a bag that hung over her shoulder and low on her hip. “This is going to hurt, my sweet boi.” She cackled as she drew nearer.
I began to crab-crawl away from her and this made her laugh even more. Upon reaching me she put her bare foot on my chest and held me firmly in place. From the bag she brought forth a handful of what looked to be flower pedals, but in the failing light I couldn’t tell what kind of flower, nor did I really care. She maneuvered around me without taking her foot from my chest and raised the knife to the side and I just knew she was going to disembowel me.
I was going to die in this little clearing with the sun sinking below the horizon and my entrails steaming around me. She likely was going to use them to divine the future, or whatever it is that witches did with entrails.
The pain wasn’t as bad as what I expected it to be, nor as bad as what I had experienced moments ago, but it threatened to make me pass out. I felt my blood flow freely from the incision she made and now thought of how it must feel for a woman to get a cesarean section. She took those flower pedals and stuffed them into the wound she had made.
I thought of how dirty her hands were, all caked with mud and who knows what else, I was going to need a tetanus shot if I ever escaped this hell I found myself in, but I think I might just bathe for a week in a bathtub filled with Purell if, and that’s a big IF, I ever found my way out of this predicament.
I watched as she took out a needle that looked like it was made of bone from her satchel. It had some sort of thick string attached to it, probably some sort of leather, and she started to stitch up my stomach. I watched in horror as she closed the incision she had made with that jagged knife. My world was a kaleidoscope of pain right then and to be quite frank I didn’t even feel the needle as it punctured my skin with a sickening pop. Nor did I feel it when she pulled that leather string tight through my skin, all I really felt was a tugging sensation and I heard the string being pulled through the fat of my stomach.
I looked at her face and it was comical in a macabre sort of way. Her tongue hung out slightly from between her grayish lips and it looked like a piece of raw liver that had been sitting out on the counter for days on end. She had a long rotting tooth that protruded out over her bottom lip from above, which reminded me of what Orcs looked like from any number of fantasy books and movies out there. It was more a tusk, truth be told, than a tooth and I tried to look anywhere else but at her face and that tusk-tooth of hers.
At long last she finished stitching me up and drew the leather string taunt. She leaned in and chewed off the leather string and tied it in a rough knot against my belly. “It is going to be painful for a while, but it will heal faster than any wound you have ever had, thanks to the Milk of Shub-Niggurath you took without permission, you thieving bastard. . .” She croaked at me and poked me hard in the ribs, then cackled despite herself. “Oh you are in for a treat my sweet boi. A rare and wonderful treat. Soon you will feel it growing within you. Twisting and turning your guts around. It’s goin’ ta feel like you’ve got a nest of rats in your belly.” She turned from me and hobbled away, cackling the whole way into the gathering gloom.
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