T005:: Rot

Saliva dribbled from her lips, mingling with the fresh blood dripping from her chin. She ate rather quietly, nibbling on the fingertips. The young girl treated the hand gently. Delicately, even. She licked it up and down before softly pressing her teeth down on the bright, fair flesh. Softly, at first, then harder and harder until the skin burst and scarlet lukewarm fluids rushed into her mouth and flowed serenely down her parched throat.

Her face caked with blood and matted black hair shielding her eyes of an unknown colour. Hunched over, scrawny and weak-looking. Enveloped thinly, everywhere really, in glossy red film of a kind. Anyone, seeing the sight and hearing the sounds that she made coming from a dead-end alley, would have hurried on their way, frightened of becoming the witness to a rape or worse: a murder.

But one man stopped. He cocked his head and listened, his sharp ears picking up more than the usual passers-by. Licking, biting, chomping, chewing... devouring. He did not smile or blink. He did not twitch or move a muscle. Not for several minutes. When he was satisfied with his listening, he turned and walked in.

Pitch black. That was all he saw. But of course, saying that, he did not see much at all. Or did he?

"Foul creature fallen to sin," he whispered in a secret tongue. "Turn to face me." The girl flinched, but after a moment's pause resumed eating. "Turn to face me," the man hissed, more forcefully this time.

And then the girl turned. A finger protruded from her mouth between her bloodstained teeth, and this she quickly swallowed. Like a snake devouring too-large prey, she jerked her head upwards and let the finger slide down her throat. Normally, a human would choke on that. But someone like her... something like her.... had no more use for things like 'gag reflexes'.

"Foul creature fallen to sin," the man continued. "I speak in the name of all that I stand for. I speak in the name of He who I serve. I speak in the name of the Lord Devil, God. What is your name?"

"..Ahhhh leeeeshhh," the girl -- or rather the creature -- gurgled. It almost sounded like the bubbling of a brook or the babbling of a baby. The man thought for a moment, and gave the slightest of nods to himself.

"...Alice. Come closer."

"Closer."

"There's a good girl."

A scream.

"No longer will you live in sin, living as one who is no longer truly alive. You have now gone to His side, living -- living? -- by the side of the Almighty Lord Devil, whose name shall be God. No longer will your soul wriggle and writhe in the depravity you have fallen to. No longer will you rot. Foul creature.

"Absolved."