Frankenstein Novelette - Erotic Horror by C.C. Matthews

Prologue 

 Velvet and Lightning

Münsterberg Asylum, Lower Saxony — 1831

 The storm hadn’t come yet, but Colin could smell it. Lightning flared behind the clouds. Rain pounded the glass. He was always waiting for storms. Always hoping they would come.

The old wings of Münsterberg were hushed for the night, though silence was a lie in a place like this. Behind iron doors and frosted panes, the mad whispered to ghosts. Some screamed into their pillows. Some murmured prayers in Latin, backwards. Colin had stopped asking them why.

Colin was no physician. Not really. He was the bastard son of a ghost. His father, Victor Frankenstein, had died in the Arctic, pursued by the same thing he had conjured from death and hubris. Colin knew this not from books, but from his mother’s lips. He had never seen her face clearly. She lived in the shadows of his memory: bruised mouth, copper hair, a birthmark shaped like a teardrop on her collarbone. A servant, maybe. A baroness. A whore. It didn’t matter. She had died mad, and that was legacy enough.

What mattered was the name she gave him: Frankenstein.

He had not spoken it aloud until he was seventeen, when he slit open the chest of a hanged man beneath the cathedral and whispered it into the exposed lungs.

“Frankenstein,” he had said. “We begin again.

He stood now in the eastern tower, watching lightning bruise the clouds over the hills. Behind him, the operating table gleamed like a confession.

On it: her.

Or rather, the shape of her. She was not finished, not complete. There was no breathing. She was not alive. Not yet.

But she was beautiful. He had carved her form from memory, from notes, from myth, and from the ache in his bones. Her skin was a shade too pale for mortality. Her lips were a shade too red for innocence. He had stitched her thighs with silken thread and perfumed her body with rose water. Her hair was red, a wild shock of scarlet.

She was not a corpse. She was a promise. He had not named her. He would not. Not until she opened her eyes. But he had dreamed her name.

Astrid.

       Colin unbuttoned his shirt with trembling hands, not from desire. Not quite. But from a thing deeper than desire. A madness with a pulse. A hunger that bled into devotion.

He pressed his bare chest to hers. She was cold. She was unperfect, unmoving.

He whispered. “I am not my father.”

He repeated it. “I am not my father.”

And yet, he had stolen from graves. He had lied to bishops. He had defiled the altar and offered up the bones of innocents in place of saints. He was his father. But even worse. Because he loved her.

Can love be a sin? he wondered. Love is beautiful. Love is sublime. But love can be wrong, he thought. It can corrupt. It can be harmful. And it could be warped and unnatural. Yet, he thought, we cannot help who we love.

His thoughts soon yielded as jagged lightning cracked near the asylum. The candles trembled. The machine hissed behind him, runes burning into copper, fluid trembling in glass veins. The Seraph Engine, he called it. Not lightning, but language. Not life stolen, but life screaming out into the world of mortals.

He had translated the rite from a manuscript in blood. He had stitched its vowels into her flesh. He was confident she would resurrect. He was certain she would. And when she did, she would be his.

She was not a monster. She would not be a bride. Something was to be something new. Something sacred. Inevitably, she would be something damned.

 

CHAPTER ONE

When She Woke

“Men May Become Gods, but Men Will Create Hell as Collateral”

--Adam

It began with breath. Not a gasp, not a scream. just breath. It was low and wet and trembling, as if the lungs beneath the silk stitched skin had only just remembered how to exist. Her chest fluttered once. Then again. Then it was still.

Colin didn’t move. He was standing in the violet haze of candlelight, shirtless, blood on his collarbone, hands trembling at his sides. The air in the tower room was heavy with ozone, sweat, and the metallic sting of ritual, yet it all felt so wrong. She smelled of burnt copper and lilac oil, the incense of unnatural resurrection.

She lay before him on the marble slab, naked, beautiful and wrong. Her skin was too pale for the living, too perfect for the dead. No pulse danced beneath it, yet still she breathed. Her lips, full and parted, were the color of stolen wine. Her lashes fluttered like moth wings. And her hair—a storm of crimson—fanned out like blood spilled across the linen altar beneath her.

She was art and heresy. She was flesh made from defiance. She was his. And she was waking. She was alive.

Lightning cracked the heavens beyond the tower glass, throwing her body into a sudden silhouette of bones and curves, stitches and scars, breast and hip, all outlined like a cathedral’s stained-glass saint come to trembling life.

Then her eyes opened, not slowly or gently, but they snapped open, as if something in her had risen from deep beneath the sea of the self and clawed its way to the surface.

Colin stepped closer. “Breathe,” he whispered.

The candlelight caught the edge of his face showing black, wet curls, hollow cheekbones, eyes wide with madness and awe.

“Breathe, my love…”

She turned her head. Her pupils contracted. The storm outside roared again.

And then: her mouth moved.

She birthed a word from her beautiful mouth It sounded broken, drenched in memory. It was almost a name.

“A… da…”

Her body arched. Veins flared under her skin in bright violet trails, like lightning frozen beneath the surface. She gasped. And screamed from remembering.

       He caught her before she fell. She had thrown herself off the table, writhing, trembling, the sheet falling away from her skin like a forgotten shroud. He held her to him, one arm around her waist, the other cradling her skull.

She was burning up as her mouth was against his throat, teeth bared. Her nails dug crescents into his ribs.

“Shhh,” he murmured, lips against her temple. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

“No,” she said. “No.”

Her voice was hoarse, yet beautiful, but unformed.

His muscles tightened as he carried her through the tall chamber with its black chandeliers and pools of shadows. Past the altar, past the machine, its copper coils still glowing with dying heat. He took her into the bed chamber, crossing the threshold as if he were carrying his virgin bride to their bed for the first time.

 

It was not a sterile room. It was not a cage. It was her own quarters. The bed was built of mahogany. Velvet drapes flanked a massive window. Black rose petals littered the sill. A carved angel that hung above the headboard looked like it wept into the firelight.

He laid her gently on the bed and knelt beside it, hands shaking. “You’re awake,” he whispered. “God, you’re awake.”

She stared at him. Her eyes were not like the eyes of the dead. They shimmered with unshed sorrow, with want. They conveyed something too ancient for language.

“Who… are you?” she asked.

He smiled, blood on his lips from where her nails had cut him. “I’m the man who brought you back.”

     

The storm raged. The fire in the hearth bloomed. And Astrid lay beneath furs and silk sheets, skin damp with newness. She slept without dreaming, but her breath was full of half-spoken names, and her thighs shifted restlessly beneath the covers as if chasing something she had not yet found.

Colin sat in the chair by her bed. He was always watching. He had not slept in four days. He had not wept in twelve years. But tonight, he did both.

He kissed the edge of her pillow when she turned in her sleep. He whispered stories to her bones. He opened the book beside him, the Liber Seraphim, the one that had stitched her back together with words too ancient for sanity.

He burned pages into the fire. One by one. “You are no longer bound to it,” he whispered. “You are real now. You belong only to yourself.”

But he was lying. Because she belonged to him. Didn’t she?

 

She woke at dawn. The storm had passed. The sky outside the frosted, glass window was pale lavender and bruised gold. Snow fell lightly, painting the tower in hush and shimmer.

Colin was asleep in the chair, his head bowed, one hand holding a bloodied cloth.

She sat up slowly. Her muscles ached, but not like death. She was… sore. As if born from something more than stitching. Her thighs trembled. Her throat burned.

She looked down at her hands. They seemed perfect. They were pale, scarred at the wrist with a thread-thin seam of black. Her breasts rose and fell in a slow, aching rhythm. She stood up. The cold hit her nipples like glass. She didn’t flinch. She walked barefoot to the mirror. The reflection was… strange. She saw herself but she didn’t. That is not who I remember, she thought, and her eyes lingered, her head tilting slowly, to and fro. Her hair was the color of red candlewax. She had full hips and a slender waist. The curve of her stomach rose like a moon. Her lips seemed too red. Here dark eyes seemed too knowing.

“I was made,” she whispered.

Then she said it again. “I was made.”

She ran a hand down her chest, to her belly. Then she slid her hand surreptitiously between her tender thighs. It was her. But it was not enough. She needed to know who had looked at her with longing before the world turned to fire. Who had whispered her name. Not this name, but the one she had forgotten, long ago, in the dark.

She turned to the man in the chair. “Wake up,” she yelled. Her voice was louder than she thought, and it startled her, maybe more than it startled him.

He jolted, eyes bloodshot. He was breathing fast.

She stood there, naked and terrible and holy, her hair wild around her shoulders.

“What is my name?” she asked.

He stared at her like a dying man seeing heaven. “Astrid,” he said. “I called you Astrid.”

She blinked. Then nodded. “Then I’ll take it.”

       She did not ask for a robe. She walked barefoot to the hearth, hips swaying with unnatural grace. The movement was neither learned nor practiced but remembered, as if the body had once danced in another life, in another fire.

Colin watched her like a man half-mad with thirst. The flames kissed her skin in waves, lighting the slope of her back, the soft swell of her thighs, the outline of her ribs beneath skin that was far too flawless for any god’s mercy.

He stood. Slowly. Carefully.

“I thought you might be cold,” he offered, voice rough as a blade dulled on bone.

Astrid turned. “I am,” she said, and let the words hover in the chamber. “But I don’t want to cover it.”

He hesitated. “It?”

She tilted her head, her hair cascading in loose, shining waves. “This. Me.”
A smile tugged at her lips. It was almost cruel, almost innocent. “Isn’t this what you wanted to see?”

Colin swallowed. “I created you to live.”

She walked closer. Step by step, with predatory grace. “No. You created me because you were lonely.”

She was in front of him now. She was close enough he could feel her breath against his chest, cold and crisp and tinged with ash.

“Do you want me?” she asked.

The question cut through him like lightning. He tried to answer, and he tried to look away. But her hand touched his throat, fingers tracing the hollow where his pulse lived.

“Don’t lie. I’m made of your lies,” she whispered into his cold ear.

He shuddered, closed his eyes, and spoke the truth. “Yes.”

She leaned in. “Then kiss me.”

Their mouths met like blood and blessing. It wasn’t gentle at all. She bit his lip. Blood trickled down his chin. He didn’t seem to care He grabbed her waist too hard, left bruises he would weep over later. She tasted like silver and salt. Like winter roses and old dust.

Their tongues tangled, breath stuttering. He lifted her, reaching his arms under her thighs. and laid her across the wide velvet chaise beside the fire, her hair spilling like red yarn over the blue fabric.

She pulled him down atop her, her nails clawing along his spine. “Tell me,” she gasped between kisses. “What did you use?”

“What—?”

“My lips. My thighs. My—”

“A courtesan’s mouth,” he confessed. “A dancer’s hips. A duchess’s hands. A poet’s tongue.”

“And my heart?”

He hesitated.

She looked up at him. Her piercing eyes were like twin bruises of moonlight.

“Did you give me yours?”

“I—I didn’t have one left.”

“Then I suppose I’ll make one.”

They didn’t make love. They didn’t fuck. They writhed. It was clumsy, brutal. And then they broke. She pinned him with her thighs. He buried his face in her hair and sobbed as she rocked above him, guiding his hard cock inside of her. She felt herself soaking inside. It was odd, but it felt satisfying in a primal way, but something here was missing.

     She slid up and down. He pulled at her hair and kissed her as she thrusted up and down him. She pulled her lips away from his, tearing spittle away from his mouth. It was bestial, she thought. She gazed into his eyes, she lowered onto him, feeling his heart pounding savagely. His cock went deeper, slower, until he begged for release. They moaned in sync, for the head of his cock had hit a spot that felt different than the rest. She heard the creaking of the floorboards. Sitting up, she readjusted his cock inside her. She lifted her cunt up, feeling the warmth of his flesh slide and quiver. This was pure want and desire, she mused as she could feel his flesh spasm and pump hot liquid deep into her. He moaned more, louder this time, his eyes rolling.

      She had pleased him certainly, and she had felt things she didn’t know were possible in this short life, but again, she knew something was wrong. Something was not right.

“I was not born to be yours,” she whispered. “But I’m not ready to leave.”

He kissed her breasts like prayer. He tasted sweat and salt and something stranger. It was a hunger rising in her blood, ancient and unnamed.

After, they lay together on the floor before the hearth. They were still naked, their legs intertwined like vines stretching to live forever.  He seemed spent, but Astrid wanted more.

The velvet throw covered them like a shroud. Colin stroked her back in slow spirals. She gazed at the dancing light of the fire in the hearth.

“You don’t own me,” she said softly.

“No,” he agreed. “I only… found you.”

“You built me,” she corrected. “Like a cathedral. Like a gallows.”

“I hoped it would be enough.”

“It isn’t,” she replied, not understanding the feelings that gushed out of her like a geyser.

He nodded. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes, but he let them fall in silence. She closed hers. Leaned her head to his chest. His heartbeat was different this time.

She whispered into his ear. “There’s someone else. In the dark. I saw his eyes before I died.”

“Who?” Colin asked her, his voice high-pitched.

“I don’t know his name.”
        There was a beat, then and awkward breath. Colin began to cry audibly.

“But he knew mine,” she continued.

 

Chapter Two

The Flesh Remembers

There is no soul without sensation. There is no memory without ache.

The house was alive. Not in the way breath makes lungs stir, or blood warms flesh. No, this place was haunted by her. Or perhaps, she was haunted by it.

Astrid walked the halls barefoot, her skin prickling with every draft, every subtle shift of light on the black-lacquered walls. The corridors felt wet somehow, slick with old varnish and secret sin. Even the sconces whispered as she passed, casting shadows that flickered like watching eyes. Her senses were sharpened, too sharp. The rustle of curtains sounded like whispers behind doors. The creak of floorboards struck her like notes in an unfinished symphony. The cold iron doorknobs bit at her palms like teeth. And her body—God, her body—was a language she didn’t yet speak. But she felt it. Burning beneath the velvet robe. Tight between her thighs. She was hungry, but not for food. She was raw, aching, open about exploring provocative and primitive baser needs. Astrid was a woman reborn with too much nerve and not enough name.

 

She found his study by accident, or it could have been instinct. Leatherbound books were stacked like towers of Babel. Myriad journals. Books on Anatomies. There was a bust of Victor Frankenstein shattered on the floor. The room was dark and lonely, fueling the void she felt inside of her chest. She ran a finger along the spine of a bound volume titled The Architect of Resurrection and shivered when it throbbed with warmth beneath her touch.

You remember him, she thought.

Not Colin. Not this careful, trembling man who stitched her skin like prayer. But the other one. It was the first creator. She just knew it. She could feel it deep in every fiber of her newly stitched body. Victor Frankenstein. The coward. The god.

 

Colin did not touch her, at least not in ways that mattered. He brought her teas steeped in rosewater and fennel. He left gloves and lace and perfume upon her dressing table. He waited outside her door like a monk on vigil, but he looked, always looked. His haunting gaze was on her throat as she drank. His eyes lingered on her ankles as they slipped from under her gown. They lingered on her lips when she smiled without kindness. She knew what he wanted. But he would not ask.

 

It was raining when she found him. The storm brought the sound of grinding glass outside, thunder shaking the walls like a beast trying to get in. She opened the study door without knocking. He was at his desk, shirtless and pale. A candle burned low, yielding the sight of blood, on the pages, on his chest. He held a scalpel in one hand, a cloth in the other. She did not gasp. She watched intently.

“You’re hurting yourself,” she said flatly.

He didn’t look at her. “I had to feel something,” he replied gloomily.

“You have me,” she replied.

“That’s not the same.”

She crossed the room slowly. Kneeling behind him, she took the cloth from his hand.

“Don’t move,” she whispered.

She cleaned the blood from his skin with delicate, almost reverent strokes. Her hands were cool, steady. The scent of iron filled the room. He flinched when she touched his ribs. Her lips followed, and she kissed him there. She then went lower, opening the rest his shirt and kissed his stomach. She felt him twitch. Then she went lower.

He moaned. Just once, then bit his tongue.

“I’m not a saint,” he breathed.

“No,” she said. “You’re just a man.”

       She pulled him up, turned his face to hers. Their mouths met, not sweet, but desperate. It was a violent kiss of teeth, tongue, and blood. His wound brushed her breast and made them both gasp. This wasn’t romance. It was confession. He kissed her like a wolf on its first kill, and she kissed him like a storm kissing the edge of a cliff.

When they pulled apart, his lip was torn. Blood welled, rich and red. She licked it away. His hands moved to her hips, trembling.

“Please,” he whispered. “Tell me you’re real.”

Astrid looked at him, beautiful and broken and weeping, and said: “I was real before you ever touched me.”

Then she stood and walked to the window and pressed her palm against the cold glass. Outside, lightning danced in the sky like something calling her back. Her eyes were far away.

 

That night, Astrid did not sleep. She descended. Her mind unraveled into candlelight and scent.

She found herself naked in a wax garden, surrounded by statues of men and women in frozen agony. Their eyes were glass. Their mouths had been sewn shut. Roses bloomed from their throats. The sky above was black silk. There were no stars. No moon.

And he was there. Not Colin. The other. He was a man of monstrous grace, carved from storm and stone. He was naked, his hulking body scarred, towering. His eyes burned like frost catching fire.

“You called me,” he said, his voice deep, dark, but it soothed her instantly.

She opened her arms. “I remembered.”

He came to her. There was no shame, only heat. He pressed his brow to hers and held her in silence. When his hand slid down her spine, she arched like a bow. When he kissed her mouth, it tasted like thunder.

He knelt. “You are mine,” he whispered, burying his face between her silky thighs.

Her cries echoed across the garden. The wax statues wept streams of blood.

 

She woke up gasping, slick with sweat, thighs damp from the dream. Colin was at her door.

“I felt something,” he said. “I had to see you.”

She pulled him in. He stared at her half-naked form, breasts heaving, legs tangled in satin.

“You’re shaking,” she whispered.

He dropped to his knees. “I dreamt you were leaving me. For someone else. For something inhuman.”

She cupped his face. “Then don’t let me go.”

He crawled into her bed. There, in the hush between lightning strikes, they touched again, but this time darker. Astrid rolled him onto his back. She straddled him, slowly, one thigh pressing to his ribs.

“Let me see,” she commanded, voice velvet-laced iron.

He trembled as she peeled back his shirt, revealing scars. old and new. They were runes of his shame, his rituals, his guilt.

She kissed each one. She bit into one. He gasped.

“You think pain redeems you,” she said.

“I think you do.”

She mounted him then, guiding his cock inside with a slow, brutal grace. This was not worship. This was possession. She rocked on him like a queen on a throne built from bones and regret. His moans were choked. Her nails drew fresh blood. For a short time, his cock felt like a dagger of pleasure. With each strike of flesh, she felt her nerves crashing.

Colin squeezed the tender flesh of her ass and pulled her up and down harder, faster. He lifted his head and went to her dangling breasts. He licked at them as her crimson locks spilled onto his head. She felt something break inside of her. It was an internal fountain of electricity, spraying sparks or primal lust withing her. The bed sighed, spreading to the floorboards. She could her cunt emit wet, erotic sounds and she smacked against his hot, angry flesh. He growled, pulling harder. His cock throbbed inside her. She shuddered and began to work her clit with one hand, falling onto him. She burst, moaning and cooing. When she climaxed, she screamed a name.

It was not Colin’s.

 

Later, as Colin slept, spent and dreaming of her smile, Astrid stood once more in front of the mirror, and she saw him again. It was Adam. But now, the image moved. He was on a cliff’s edge, cloaked in furs. He was alone, watching a storm approach. His lips moved. And though she could not hear the words, she felt them.

I burn every time you touch him.

She fell to her knees. The mirror did not crack. It wept.

 

When Colin awoke, she was lying beside him. Silent. Still. She let him kiss her shoulder,
let his fingers trace lazy circles on her slender hip. But her eyes were open. And far away. They were not in this room, not in this bed, nor in this life. She was already reaching for something older, darker. He was waiting for her across the distance of pain and fire.

 

Chapter Three

The Mirror of Memory

The dead do not sleep. They wait behind the glass.

It was the mirror that called to her. It never called in words, but in warm vibrations, in the strange sensation of being watched even when she was alone.

Astrid had begun to walk farther each day, beyond the velveted halls of Colin’s ancestral home, beyond the gates, down a winding path that curved like a serpent through black pine and fog.

The forest was wet with memory. The bark was slick with dew, the moss breathing underfoot. Every tree she passed felt like a sentinel, or a witness. And there, like a fang driven into the landscape, stood the ruin. It was a manor, half-swallowed by ivy and collapse, windows broken like forgotten eyes. She pushed open the door, and the house sighed.

      The mirror was in what had once been a drawing room. It had a grand, rotted frame, blackened silver, tarnished glass. And in it was nothing. She could not see her face, nor the fireplace behind her, not even the room. The mirror reflected only a mysterious man, one that was tall and cloaked His face was veiled in shadow, though she could make out the outline of scars and eyes. They were eyes she had seen before fire.

“Adam,” she whispered.

The image rippled. The mirror shivered. And her body answered. Heat coiled low in her belly. Her skin lit with ache. She reached out.

 

The room was filled with dust and damp. But beneath a half-rotted settee, she found a wooden box. It was cracked and stained but sealed tight. She opened it. Inside it she found a plethora of journals, scrawled in furious ink. Pages torn, others stuck together with age and moisture. Some pages smelled of blood. She opened one.

“I saw her—God, she looked at me and did not recoil. Her eyes... blue fire. I will never forget them.”

Another:

“They said she was ash. But I swear, I heard her name in the river’s rush. I’ve buried myself in the woods to forget her—but I dream her body. I dream her voice. I dream the scream when she was torn from me.”

Tears welled in Astrid’s eyes. They were not sorrow, but tears of recognition. Pain wrapped around her like a shroud. And in her head, a voice echoed: “You were made for me.”

The room began to spin. She staggered to the mirror again. Her reflection was still absent.
She saw only him. This time, the image moved. Adam’s mouth parted. He raised one hand, as if reaching toward her from across some terrible abyss.

“You survived,” he whispered.

The glass splintered. Astrid cried out, collapsed to her knees, clutched her head. Memories poured in; they were not thoughts but sensations: The searing pain of creation. The fire that devoured her flesh. The last thing she saw was his eyes, looking back at her across the table before Victor tore her apart. She screamed. And the house screamed with her.

 

When she woke, it was night. Rain pounded against the shattered windows. Thunder trembled in her bones. She was naked on the floor, her robe discarded, her skin lit by lightning. The journal lay across her stomach like a sacrament.

And now, she knew. “Adam,” she whispered, touching her lips. “That is your name. And you are mine.”

She stood, slow and regal, her spine a line of fury and grace. There was blood on her thighs. She did not remember bleeding. She did not care. She stepped into the storm, into the wild, into the dark.

The hunt had begun.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

Heretic and Saint

"You are not blasphemy," the madman whispered. "You are the answer to the body’s prayer."

Something was changing. Astrid could feel it beneath her flesh. It was not decay, but she thought maybe it was evolution.

The seams along her thighs no longer itched. The stitchwork in her wrists pulsed faintly, then faded as the tissue knotted over itself, stronger, smoother, as if her body was refusing to remain a relic. Her muscles tightened without effort. Her vision sharpened at night. She did not blink as often. Sometimes, she could hear Colin breathing from two rooms away. She smelled blood beneath his bandages. She tasted electricity in the air when he approached her door.

“The dead do not stay dead,” she whispered, admiring her reflection. “Some of us adapt.”

 

The estate had once been an asylum. The wings still echoed. Colin claimed the lower floors were sealed, forgotten. They were not. Astrid began walking the halls at night, barefoot in a sheer chemise of black lace. The torches flickered low, and shadows clung to her like jealous lovers.

The patients, if that was still what they were, watched her from their corners.

One, a toothless man with yellow eyes and ink-covered arms, whispered: “She walks again... the Lady of the New Flesh...”

Another, a girl with spiderwebs braided into her hair, fell to her knees when Astrid passed, hands pressed together in prayer. “You’re real,” she murmured. “You came back to us.”

Astrid did not speak. She only smiled.

 

It was midnight when she came to him. Colin sat at his desk, half-dressed, candlelight casting sharp shadows across his chest. He smelled of iron and ink, of old linen and guilt. He didn’t hear her enter.

“You never lock your door,” she said.

He turned, startled, but not afraid. Never afraid of her.

“You don’t need locks,” he said. “You could break any door.”

She stepped closer, letting her robe slip from her shoulders. The silk caught on her nipples before falling to her hips, leaving her bare from the waist up.

“What do you want from me, Colin?”

He didn’t answer. His hands clenched in his lap.

“You stitched me into being,” she said. “You named me. You cleaned the blood from my thighs and combed the ash from my hair. But do you want me?”

He stood slowly.  She came to him. He reached for her waist, trembling. They kissed. This time, it was not desperate. It was not pity. It was necessity, hot and reverent. But she stopped him.

“You love what you made,” she whispered, lips brushing his ear. “I love what I remember.”

She pulled back. He didn’t chase her.

 

She packed nothing. She left barefoot, in the same silk robe she’d seduced him in. There was no ceremony, no storm, just her silhouette in the hallway, lit by moonlight through stained glass.

As she passed the lower ward, the whispering returned.

“Saint of Skin...”

“Bride of the Body...”

“She walks toward her mate...”

She opened the gate herself. It did not resist her touch. The night swallowed her like a lover long denied. And Colin, alone at his desk, heard her final words echo down the hallway:

“You wanted a woman. But I was born remembering what it is to be worshipped.”

 

Chapter 5

 Through Ash and Rain

“She walked through plague and prophecy, naked beneath heaven’s eye, calling for the man she loved. And behind her, the world remembered what it meant to burn.”

She walked for days, through ruined villages, long abandoned by the living. Her journey took her through woodland paths where the air stank of mildew and something older, something watching. She passed abbeys gutted by time, where the frescoes wept mold and angels had no faces. The sky never cleared. Rain fell like punishment, cold, relentless. Ash sometimes mixed with it, gray flakes dancing like unholy snow. From where? She didn’t know. But it coated her lips, tasted of old rot and grief.

She didn’t flinch. She walked barefoot, wrapped in nothing but a sheer cloak of black lace and rage. Her thighs and feet were bruised from travel. She went, pushing through the pain, remembering him, yearning for him. And sometimes, when she passed into forgotten villages where corpses rotted in beds or hung in silent prayer from rafters, she whispered his name.

“Adam…”

Nothing answered. Yet the storm always grew louder when she spoke it.

 

She found the men in a dead town’s chapel, drunk on sacramental wine and arrogance. There were five of them. They called her witch, stray, whore, and angel—in that order. They circled her like wolves. She let them.

One, the youngest, reached for her. “We can be kind,” he lied.

She took his hand and placed it on her breast.

“No,” she said. “You can be mine.”

She undressed slowly. Each man dropped to his knees, stunned. The storm clapped overhead. Her skin gleamed with rain. They gasped when they saw the stitches, the pain. She laughed wickedly, moving toward them, her muscles tightening with adrenaline initiated by all the dark things that made her. They were terrified of her, and they ran, never looking back at her.

“Tell the world,” she said, licking his tears. “The Bride walks again.”

 

That night she stood naked atop a hill of moss and bone, overlooking a drowned forest. The moon turned her skin silver. Her breath misted in the air. Her thighs were still wet from conquest and memory.

She raised her arms. “Adam,” she whispered. “My Adam. I call you. By the skin we once shared. By the pain we both knew. Come to me.”

Thunder answered. The earth trembled. She felt him, somewhere distant, waking. She pressed two fingers between her thighs and sighed, longing for him.

“I was made for you. Not him. You knew me before I had a name.”

 

Miles away, in a stone tower slick with wax and rot, a woman in crimson smiled. Her name was Mother Lucia, Abbess of the Cult of the New Flesh. She turned to her acolytes. Who were naked, tattooed, eyes sewn with gold thread.

“She is near,” Lucia whispered. “The Bride returns. We must find her before he does.”

The Cult had waited fifteen years. They had watched tombs. They had studied the black gospel of resurrection. And now, the Saint of Sinew, the Virgin of Vein, the Consort of the Monster walked again.

  

Meanwhile, back in the asylum’s upper wing, Colin stood in front of an empty bed, nails torn and lips cracked. He could still smell her. Her robe lay across the windowsill, soaked in rain. Her scent lingered: rose and thunder and something unholy.

       He screamed. Then whispered: “You belong to me. You don’t get to leave.”

He began his search with blood on his cuffs and madness in his throat. The hunt had begun. But not just his.

 

Chapter 6

The Temple Below

“There are places beneath the skin where worship lives.”
—The Codex of Red Silk

 

Astrid came to the city after midnight. The road had crumbled to ruin. The buildings had no roofs. Moss clung to pillars like desperate hands. Rain no longer fell here. Only mist that moved like breath from an open mouth.

At the edge of a sunken square, a cathedral sat buried halfway into the earth, as though the world itself had tried to swallow it and failed. Its steeple pierced the fog. Its doors were sealed in muscle-pink marble, veined like flesh, etched with words in no living tongue. When Astrid touched them, the doors opened with a sigh.

Inside she found guttering torches giving sight to rich velvet. She took in incense smelled of rose and salt and blood, then within seconds she saw eyes—so many eyes—watching from balconies and shadows.

She entered barefoot, rain-kissed and unafraid. They called her Beloved of the Bone. They called her Saint of the Seam. They called her The Bride-Who-Was-and-Will-Be.

She was surrounded by naked worshipers, clad only in scars and silk threads. At the center of it all sat Abbess Lucia, blindfolded in crimson gauze, lips dark as crushed mulberries, her body adorned in golden thorns.

“You walk in the prophecy,” Lucia said, voice low as smoke. “You are the union of wound and wonder.”

Astrid did not speak. She simply breathed, and the whole temple seemed to exhale with her. They bathed her in blood-wine, in a basin carved from a saint’s ribcage. They anointed her skin with black myrrh and oil laced with crushed petals and ashes of the original Bride. What they believed were her remains. Women and men pressed lips to her knees, her thighs, her fingers.
They wept when she touched them in return.

Lucia stood beside her, whispering prayers in a tongue half Latin, half sigh. “This is not submission,” the Abbess said. “This is reclamation. What they called monstrous, we call divine.”

When Astrid lay back on the altar, arms outstretched, the silks fell from her breasts. The first acolyte to mount the steps was a woman: pale, lithe, with a mouth like a scarred rose. She kissed Astrid’s stomach, then lower, dragging her warm lips close to her cunt, just right above, where she lingered, sucking and pulling her flesh lightly. Then came another, this one male, strong, reverent. He touched her only when she permitted. One by one they came, not to take, but to offer.

Astrid let herself be touched. She let herself be adored. She opened herself to them. She did this not in weakness, but in exploration. She still wasn’t sure what she truly sought, but this seemed right. This felt so wondrous, yet she did not want to let them have all of what they may have wanted.

“I am not yours,” she said to them all. “But you may worship.”

        Later, as the chamber cooled and her skin glistened with oils and tears, Lucia approached alone. She removed her blindfold. Her eyes were milky and glowing, like pearls dropped in wine.

“He lives,” Lucia said.

Astrid didn’t move.

“Adam,” the Abbess continued. “Your beloved. The Monster. He walks still. In ruin. In shadow. In shame. He hides not from the world, but from you.”

Astrid clenched the edge of the altar.

“He believes he is unworthy,” Lucia said. “And in time, if you do not go to him… he will vanish into the dark for good.”

 

Alone in the ritual chamber, Astrid stared into a mirror. Her reflection stared back, but it wasn’t hers. It was his. Adam. She remembered the eyes, but they were hollowed now. Broken by solitude. Yet still he was so beautiful.

“You waited for me,” she whispered. “Now I will find you.”

She touched her lips. They still tasted of wine and flesh. But her hunger was still present, still aching inside.

 

Chapter 7

The Monster in Winter

“There is no clock in exile. Only memory.”
—Adam’s Journal, found beneath the roots of a black pine tree

 

He lived in the woods beyond the Carpathian line, in a ruin swallowed by ivy and ash. There was no bed. No fire. Only stone and bones, and the sound of ice cracking deep beneath the earth. Adam had stopped counting winters after the seventh. Or the eighth. Or perhaps he never counted at all.

Once, he had torn down a tree with his bare hands. He didn’t do it out of rage, but to feel something break, besides himself.

He wore nothing but furs stitched from wolves and crows. His hair was long, streaked with silver, thick as storm clouds. His eyes, once a bright unnatural blue, had dimmed to the color of old bruises.

He spoke aloud only to the wind. “She never lived,” he would say. “She never lived.”

And yet, he dreamed of her. Every night. In his dreams, she never had a name. He saw only pieces: lips sewn shut with thread, breasts rising from cold water hands reaching for him through smoke. Sometimes she was burning. Sometimes she was beneath him, whispering things he didn’t dare write down.

Once, he carved her name into bark. Then he tore the tree down.

“If she lived,” he whispered once to the stars, “would she hate me? Would she pity me? Would she… touch me?”

His cock ached with memory. Pain of what he never had. Pain from what he wanted so badly. Pain for being a Monster.

       In the deepest chamber of his ruins, he kept a page. One page. Parchment scorched at the edges, blood-streaked, folded so often it barely held form. It was a letter. It was to her. He had written it a hundred times. A thousand. But he never burned this one.

My Beloved,
If you walk the world, then the gods have played me false. For I saw you unmade by fire and fear. I saw your lips part as if to speak and then scream.
I loved you before you lived.
I love you now, though I am not a man but a ruin.
Do not seek me. Or do. But know this:
I will break the world if it touches you again.
I will break myself if you do not…

—A.

 

The night before the messenger arrived, though no one would ever know it, Adam woke from a dream where she called his name. Not monster. Not creature. Not sin. Just Adam.

He opened his eyes. And for the first time in ten winters, he wept.

 

 

Chapter 8

The Man in the Forest

“Somewhere between snow and silence, I found the man they called a monster. And I loved him before he could love himself.”
—From The Red Codex of the New Flesh

 

The Carpathian wilds stretched before her like a graveyard of gods: bare trees clawing at the sky, snow falling in relentless silence. The wind howled through the mountains like a choir of the damned, and still Astrid walked. Her cloak was torn. Her boots were soaked, but her eyes burned like coals set in ice.

She had followed rumors of a hulking figure seen near sheepfolds, of footprints like thunder left in frost. Each tale led her deeper into a land untouched by mercy. And finally, there it was. She saw a cabin, hunched and hungrily buried in a snowdrift, half-consumed by pine and time. Its chimney bled smoke. Its door hung crooked. And something inside watched her through the wood.

       She knocked once, then opened the door. Inside: shadows, bones, the scent of ash and fur.
A hearth fire burned low. A stew bubbled, untouched. And there, rising like a memory from the dark, stood Adam. He was more ruin than man, taller than she remembered. His body was a latticework of hardened muscles, old scars and fresh punishment. Hair tangled past his shoulders. His face half-hidden by a beard thick as storm clouds. His eyes looked like dying stars. He did not speak. He simply stared at her with terror.

“You’re not real,” he said, voice breaking like a rusted hinge. “You can’t be real.”

She stepped forward. He stepped back.

“You’re some trick,” he said. “A memory. Or a punishment. I’ve dreamed you with hands between my thighs, and I’ve wept for it.”

She whispered: “I’m real.”

And reached for his face. Her fingers met his cheek. His whole body shuddered, as though touched by flame. He collapsed to his knees, towering, trembling, undone.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “Don’t touch what should never have lived.”

But she did. She cupped his face, ran thumbs along the stitches at his jaw. She pressed her forehead to his. Her breath mingled with his like prayer smoke rising.

“I remember you,” she whispered. “Not just from fire. From before.”

His hands gripped her waist, tentative and shaking. “You were made for me,” he said.

She smiled, sad and holy. “No,” she said. “I was made. But I chose to find you.”

 

They sat by the fire. He poured her tea with hands too large for the cup. She told him of the abbey, of Colin, of the Cult of the New Flesh. He listened in silence.

“They want me to be a goddess,” she said. “A vessel. A flame. A hole to pour their worship into.”

“You deserve more,” he muttered. “You deserve… not me.”

She touched the bandages at his wrist, gazed hauntingly at self-inflicted scars. “Do you believe you’re damned?” she asked.

“I believe I am unfinished,” he said.

“Then let me finish you.”

 

The snow thickened. Outside, the wolves circled and howled. Inside, silence. She undressed before him, not as temptation, but as truth. He didn’t reach for her. He merely looked. Every breath of her. Every freckle, every stitch. And then he knelt again. He did not pray, but he wanted to see her. When he kissed her, it was ruinous. Mouths open, desperate. His hands cupped the back of her head like she might vanish. Her nails dug into his chest, not to hurt him, but to mark.

She whispered against his lips: “I’m not afraid of you.”

He answered, voice cracked and raw: “Then you are the first.”

 

Chapter 9

 Dream of the Blood-Sewn Bride

"She kissed me. And the world did not end. But it trembled."
—Adam

 

He dreams of fire. But it is not the fire that unmade her. No. It is a warm flame. A hearth. A golden glow across skin too perfect to belong to him. Astrid, naked and unafraid, lies curled in his arms like a question made flesh.

"You are warm," she whispers.
       "I’m not supposed to be," he says.

The dream has no walls. Only silk and shadow, the scent of her sweat and the iron tang of stitched skin. She rides him slowly in the dark, lips parting with each breath, eyes fixed on his as if they might hold.

He feels his cock harden and flinch as she dampens, making each thrust easier, like flesh sticking to wet velvet.

She presses her hands hard into his chest and moans. He feels her cunt spasm. He feels himself lose control. He does not want to come. She lowers herself as far as his body will allow.

No, she begins to fade. Her face crashes to his.

He weeps into her hair. She bites his shoulder.

"Don’t worship me," she says.

"You’re not my god, but my…"

She is now gone. All that is left is her earthly and primal scent.

He screams out in suffering.

 

The dream shifts. He is back in Victor’s lab, his father, his unmaker. The slabs are clean. The hooks are waiting. And Astrid lies upon them, her body opened like a hymn.

Lucia stands at the edge of the room, eyes covered in silk, hands red with oil.

"She is the altar now," the Abbess intones. "You may pray or fuck. But not both."

Adam screams. But his voice is full of honey and wine. He kneels. He spreads her legs.
He kisses the seams of her thighs, the arch of her foot, the cavity beneath her ribs where no heart ever beat.

"I will be a monster if it means I may love you."

 

He wakes. Astrid is beside him, sleeping. She is real. The fire has died. But the storm outside builds. He hears the wind howling like the memory of wolves. And in the back of his mind: Footsteps. Flames. Betrayal.

"They will come for her," he whispers to himself. "They always come for what is beautiful."

He touches her shoulder, trembling. "Let me keep her. Let me be enough this time."

Chapter 9

The Lovers and the God

“To be touched without fear is the greatest miracle of all.”
—Astrid, Book of the New Flesh

 

It began in silence. Not the silence of fear, but that of awe. The cabin held its breath as two bodies—stitched and seamed, starved and seeking—began to move together. There was no rush. No violence. No choreography. Only the reverent, aching slowness of first union.

Astrid stood before him like an altar left untouched too long.

“You were made,” Adam said, “to be worshipped.”

She stepped closer, voice a hush: “Then worship me with your mouth, not your eyes.”

He fell to his knees like a penitent. And he did as she commanded.

       His hands were rough. His lips unsure. His breath caught each time her skin shuddered beneath his tongue.

Astrid tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him harder against her thighs. Her moans were not loud, but they were honest, elemental, like wind through broken glass. She guided him with softness, with hunger. When she finally pulled him up, his face was wet with her.

“Is this blasphemy?” he whispered.

“No,” she said, wrapping her legs around his hard hips. “This is resurrection.”

He entered her like a prayer spoken for the first time. And she received him like a church long-buried in ash. Their bodies do not fit perfectly. He was too large. She was too tight. There was pain. But neither flinched.

He cried out when she arched beneath him, her fingernails drawing blood from his shoulders. She gasped when he pressed deeper, until she felt his heartbeat inside her. They moved together, slow at first, like remembering.

Then faster. Then savage.

Then slow again.

“You are not a monster,” she moaned,

“I am only what they made,” he gasped. He thrusted harder, sweat dripping from his black hair.

“Then let us unmake each other.”

Time slowed as they made hard, crude, love. He pulled her tight to him. He sat up, erect, cross legged. He lifted her up. She screamed lightly. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he pulled her taut, his hungry cock slipping into her with ease. He pulled down hard on him. He moaned. She sighed. They kissed as she lifted herself up and down on him, using his massive shoulders as leverage.

He explored her hot, wet mouth with his tongue, then her collides with his. He sucked on its tip. He bit it, blood trickled. This spurred him on. He thrusted with a great might. She yelled, not of pain, but out of sheer pleasure.

As Adam explored her highest moist folds of flesh, Astrid began to moan, pulling his mouth away from his. She went to his shoulder and bit hard. She did not know why she did this, save for out of wanton desire.

His cock became spasmodic. It was a contagion.  Its fire spread inside her. She wanted more. And more.

His head dipped. He buried his teeth between her breasts. He bit, not too hard, but enough to make her eyes twitch, her teeth set.

They both grunted and cried aloud. His hot seed began to jet out. He groaned and rocked in her arms. This drover her mad, and his cock bean to slide against a fold she had never felt before.

“There!” she moaned. “Right there!”

He ran his hands thought her shock of hair. She screamed. His cock, now empty, continued to slide inside her. Searching intently, going in for the kill.

She could feel her own juices flood her thigh, and he tore at her hair, bit her breast. And made his cock twitch and throb, right at that perfect fold.

She screamed her head off. He came inside her again. It was all so hot and wet.

She exploded. She had never felt such beauty. Such a rush. Pleasure. Time had now stopped. She wished forever. She wished she never had to leave his arms.

 

After, they lie tangled. Her breasts rose and fell against his chest. His arms encircled her like chain and mercy. The hearth crackled low, painting them in gold and blood. He stared at her in disbelief. She smiled at him like the sun she never got to see until now. They fell asleep not as lovers or legends. But as man and woman.

In the night, they dreamed: Lucia lighting black candles in a stone chapel. Colin, wounded, dragging a broken crucifix behind him. A blade sharpened in moonlight.
A mouth whispering the word: “Betrayer.”

And then—

A scream. It came from outside. This time it was real. Torches. Footsteps. Voices. The Cult had come.

       They heard the cult before they saw them. At first, it was only a rustle. A hush beneath the howl of the storm. Then:

The crunch of boots on frost. The whisper of silk robes. A low, humming chant.

Adam stirred beside her, naked and massive, his arms still wrapped around her waist. Astrid lifted her head, eyes narrowed to the dark window. Outside: shadows moving, soft as lovers, cruel as knives.

“They’ve come,” she said.

He rose without shame, without modesty. He found a rusted axe and wrapped a threadbare cloak over her shoulders. She didn’t flinch from the cold. She glowed in it.

       The door opened like an invitation. Lucia stood there in the falling snow, robed in bone-white velvet. Her eyes were veiled in crimson lace. Her lips were black with wine. Behind her: dozens of acolytes, naked but for ash and sigils painted on their skin. Men. Women. Others. Beautiful and ruined.

“We have not come to punish you,” Lucia said. “We have come to crown you.”

Astrid did not move. She was still streaked with Adam’s touch. Her thighs glistened in the moonlight. Her hair was wild.

“You watched us,” Adam growled.

“I witnessed your union,” Lucia replied. “It was holy.”

Astrid stepped forward. “And if we refuse?”

Lucia smiled. “Then we take you. And burn the world until you understand.”

       The acolytes began to surround the cabin. Flames danced wildly. Torches caught on the brittle roof. Adam grabbed Astrid’s hand.

“There’s a path through the trees,” he said. “North, toward the river.”

“No,” she said. “We run south. To the bones of the cathedral. If they want gods, let’s give them gods that bleed.”

As they fled, the fire thrived. The cabin—their first home, their holy place—was consumed in gold and black. Behind them, Lucia knelt in the snow, laughing.

“Let the world see what comes of refusing paradise,” she whispered. “Let them become myth.”

 

That night, as they fled into the forest, Astrid slept beneath Adam’s cloak. She dreamed again: Colin, pale and shaking, crawling through candlelit corridors. A heart held in a chalice.
A bell tolling beneath the earth. A scream is torn from her own mouth. When she awoke, her thighs were wet with memory.

“They won’t stop,” she said.

“Then we make them kneel,” Adam replied.

 

Chapter 10

The God That Bleeds

A Flashback: Colin Frankenstein, three nights before the fire

 

Beneath the rotting abbey, Colin moved like a ghost. The walls sweat with age. Candlelight flickered on the stone, casting shadows that look like mouths trying to speak. The basement chapel—long abandoned, desecrated by time—now served as his sanctum.

Above the altar was a crude fresco of the crucified Bride, arms outstretched, not in agony… but in ecstasy. Her face was Astrid’s. Painted from memory. Painted in blood.

“She was never mine,” he muttered. “But I was hers.”

Colin stripped to the waist. His body was lean, pale, crosshatched with old cuts and new. He took hold of the scalpel. He did not hesitate. A line along his thigh. A circle beneath his collarbone. An X over his heart.

The pain was not relief. It was a reminder of what he touched. Of what he lost. Of what he made.

“Father made monsters,” he whispered. “But I… I made a god.”

He knelt before the altar. Bleeding. Shaking. Smiling. She came to him in smoke. Astrid, not as she was, but as he imagined her after she left. She was naked. Covered in dirt, bruises, rain. Her lips were cracked. Her breasts heaved with breath. She bowed before him.

“You loved me,” the vision said. “But you didn’t know how.”

“I do now,” he said, sobbing.

“You wanted to possess me. Not cherish me.”

“No… no, I—”

“You loved the idea of me,” she said, climbing into his lap. “Not the woman.”

Her mouth tasted of iron. Her thighs straddled his. He was hard, ashamed, undone.

“Then teach me,” he whispered. “Please, teach me.”

She vanished.

       The next morning, the villagers reported lights in the forest. A procession. Strange hymns echoing from below the marshes.

Colin lifted his body from the altar. He donned his father's old coat. Packed his notes. Binds his wounds with waxed gauze. He did not shave. He did not sleep.

Only one thing remained:

“If I cannot love her,” he said, “then I will save her from everyone who dares to try.”

He walked into the storm.

 

Chapter 10

 The Betrayer Returns

“If you will not be mine, then be no one’s.”

 

He arrived at dusk. The temple was carved into the bones of the mountain, lit with blood-orange torches and humming with the low chant of the faithful. But the storm outside was louder. And in the storm, Colin appeared. His coat was torn. His hands wrapped in bloodstained bandages. His face hollow with fever and resolve. Eyes like broken glass. He fell at the threshold, coughing ash and rain. Acolytes gathered, but he raised a scalpel to their throats and they stepped back, unsure if he was a prophet or madman.

Lucia smiled. “Ah. The prodigal.”

       Astrid stood between them: Colin, trembling, lips cracked, eyes glowing with sick devotion. Adam, vast and silent, a storm wrapped in flesh. Lucia, veiled in ivory, her hands clasped like a virgin saint’s, though her eyes burned like hell.

“I found you,” Colin said.

“I bled for you. I burned for you.”

He collapsed to his knees before her. His head rested against her hip. He clutched her thighs like a penitent knight at the altar of a pagan queen.

“Come back to me,” he whispered. “I will love you. Obey you. Worship you.”

She touched his hair. Then she stepped away.

       Adam broke between them. “She is not yours,” he said, low and final.

Colin laughed. The sound was wet, cracked, unhinged. “She’s not yours either, monster. You think rutting in the dirt makes it love?”

“I never tried to own her,” Adam said. “Only to stand beside her.”

Colin rose to his feet, nostrils flaring. “You’re wrong. You were made to be hated. I was made to love her.”

Lucia spread her hands. Her voice was velvet and dagger: “You were all made,” she says. “But only one of you understands what she could become.”

She turns to Astrid. “You could be a goddess. Worshipped by millions. Feared by kings. Come, take your throne.”

     Astrid breathed once. The entire cathedral was silent. The torches flickered. She walked toward Lucia. Colin gasped.

“Yes,” Lucia hissed. “Yes. Take your place. Be more than flesh—be divine.”

Astrid grabbed her hand. Then twisted it hard, dropping the Abbess to her knees.

“I am flesh,” she said. “And I remember every cut, every kiss, every scream that made me. I choose me. Not you. Not him. Not anyone.”

She turned to Adam. “And if you love me, you’ll let me burn it all down.”

       Lucia screamed. Acolytes charged. Colin pulled a vial from his pocket. It was black glass, Victor’s serum, stolen from his father’s grave.

“We could remake her,” he snarled.

“She was never broken,” Adam roared, and struck the vial from Colin’s hand.

It shattered. Lucia chanted in a forgotten tongue. The altar split. Blood poured from the stone as the cult unleashes their god-machine. It was a fusion of bodies and gears, stitched from a thousand sinners.

“Run,” Adam told her.

“No,” Astrid said. “We end this.”

       She climbed the steps to the altar. Naked. Unafraid. She called lightning with her scream.

She kissed Colin, softly, and said: “You loved a dream. I am awake now.”

She kisses Adam, deeply, and said: “Burn it all with me.”

Together, they tore the temple down. Fire rained from the ceiling. The machine writhed and collapsed. Lucia burned, laughing. Colin watched from the ruins, crying, whispering her name as the shadows swallow him.

 

Chapter 10

The Cathedral of Flesh

“We were made for worship—but not for theirs.”

--Adam

The underground temple moaned as if it were alive. The walls throbbed.  The columns wept a thick resin that smelled like roses and rot. The ceiling oozed humidity like breath from a wet mouth. At the center of the blood-chamber, beneath a cruciform made of stitched corpses, Lucia stood draped in funeral lace and sacred oil.

“Ascend,” she sang. “Ascend, my children of torn sinew and holy lust. Ascend!”

Around her, the Cult of the New Flesh writhed. Naked, shaved, painted in crimson sigils. Some wept. Others came. All of them chanted one name:

“ASTRID. ASTRID. ASTRID.”

And she, the unwilling saint, stood in a pool of their belief. Astrid’s arms were stretched out by chains of silk. Adam stood beside her, bruised, panting, eyes wild with resistance and longing. Their bodies were smeared with ash and blood. His through battle, hers through ritual.

     Lucia sliced her own palm and smeared her blood across their foreheads. “Then burn with me,” she smiled. “And let the world be reborn.”

       Something cracked inside Astrid. She remembered everything: Victor's hands tearing her apart. Colin’s breath on her throat. Adam’s kiss on her spine. The screaming of her soul before it had lungs.

She looked at the altar where a mechanized throne of flesh awaited her. There sat a crown made of ribs and copper wire.

“Be the bride of all.”

Instead, she opened her mouth and screamed fire. The chandeliers fell. The bone-throne ignited. The vaults trembled as if a titan had drawn breath.

“You want a god?” Astrid roared. “Then bleed for her.”

        Chaos erupted. Acolytes burned, moaning in ecstasy and agony. The spires of the cathedral crumbled. The walls opened like wounds. Adam broke his chains with raw strength. He ran to her, seizing her in his arms, covering her naked body with his own. Together they fled into the labyrinth beneath the chapel, chased by fire, chants, and collapse.

And then Colin appeared. Bloodied. Coughing. Half-dead. He held up a piece of fractured mirror, catching a beam of flame, redirecting it toward the collapsing entrance just as it would have crushed Astrid.

“Go,” he rasped. “Tell the world… you were loved.”

The arch came down. Stone swallowed him.

 

They emerged into the night, barefoot and burnt, naked beneath the moon. Ash fell like snow. Adam’s arm was wrapped around her waist. Her body shook, not from weakness, but from relief. She pressed her lips to his chest and said nothing.

They walked into the woods, smoke trailing behind them like a bridal veil. In the trees, wolves watched but did not howl.