Thereafter No More

Author’s Note: This is a story that I wrote for a Halloween Weird Story contest elsewhere. In keeping with the theme, I’ve kept quiet about how the plot goes to be a weird and perhaps a bit unsettling, little ride.

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Thereafter No More

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Heather glanced upwards from her sink and looked out the window across the expansive fields of wheat outside. Split only by her driveway that led out to the distant road, the golden crops swayed in the breeze that coursed through her house to sweep away the heat of the sun’s firm glare. The brilliant sapphire of the sky was dotted with only a few rushing clouds today. A beautiful day; hot and buzzing with cicadas

Cleaning the remnants of her lunch off the plate in her hands, Heather stared out into the wheat fields. Something moved out there; a flicker among the crops. She wasn’t sure what, likely just an animal; she certainly wasn’t expecting visitors today.

It had been a long time since she’d had visitors. Not since she’d left the city. With a sight and a shrug she placed the plate on the drying rack and picked up a towel for her hands. She frowned as some dirt and an earthworm fell from within its perfect fold. She shook it, but nothing else came free, so she kicked the worm away and dried off her hands.

She’d have to start thinking about what to do for dinner. She walked through the spotless kitchen and into the main hallway, another frown creasing her brow as she saw its state. Dirt wriggling with worms caked the floor, and the mouldy floorboards creaked as she walked across them. She would certainly have to fix them before winter hit; it would cause a nasty draft.

With a pause at the doorway she grabbed her jacket. She sighed as her finger slipped through a hole in the thick collar. Holding the wool garb in front of her she teased at the hole a moment, cursing moths beneath her breath before pulling it on.

Being careful with the pristine doorknob, she pushed out into the chilly overcast day and walked across her rickety porch as the front door closed behind her. With a shiver she glanced up to the sky hoping that the sun would come out one of these days. Maybe if she tried to pray, but those didn’t seem to be getting many answers that she liked.

With another sigh at her lips, Heather walked across her rich green lawn to the cornfield that spread all the way to the distant road, impossible to see through the towering crops. A shiver ran up her spine before she pulled her jacket tighter around her form and paused in front of the towering green stalks.

A rustle caught her attention, and she frowned. Trying to peer between the corn stalks, Heather saw nothing, but heard the rustle again. With a shake of her head she strode into the cornfield, carefully brushing the stalks aside as she headed deeper inwards.

The wind rustled the crops above her head, but she heard something further inwards, snapping the corn. Her brows creased, wondering what it could be. What fresh animal was plaguing her fields? The sight of her home was now hidden behind the wall of her crops as she emerged into a small battened down circle. In its centre was just the scarecrow crucified upon simple poles.

The crude face stitched into its burlap face looked a touch more menacing than Heather had meant it to. It flannel shirt tattered and full of holes, showing the fresh hay stuffed within. Hands on her hips, Heather turned about, and muttered to herself until she was looking back at the scarecrow.

It’s arm was bent inwards, and a single finger pressed over the jagged fang like stitching of its mouth. Earthworms squirmed from the holes of its eyes, showing a glowing red within the burlap sack. Heather took a step backwards, then heard something snap to her left.

She flicked her gaze over, and saw a shadowy figure flicker between the stalks of corn. Unnaturally tall and thin. She took another step back, felt a stalk of corn bend behind her as a drop of rain hit her head. She looked to the scarecrow once more, back to its crucified state. It was grinning now, worms spilling from its maw as the flannel shirt began to rot away before her eyes, clumps of blackened hay falling to the ground.

Heather turned and ran. Thick leaves of corn whipped across her face as she tore through the field. She heard something smashing behind her, while thunder rumbled through the sky. Rain began to pelt the world as she trampled her own field, one arm up and before her. The thick leaves tore at her sleeves, down to the skin beneath. The warmth of blood flowed beneath her jacket as she ran, and ran. Until she burst out from the field and stumbled across her lawn.

Chest heaving, Heather hurried across the dry grass, the brown blades crunching beneath her feet. Her decrepit home loomed before her. Moss clung to the rotting walls. She blinked. It felt wrong. It all felt wrong. Turning she looked upon her wheat fields, the golden crops thrashing in the winds. Standing in the fields, thin figures of shadow loomed. Spindly arms crooked at their sides, wicked claws tipping too long fingers.

Standing in wheat.

“What?” Heather said, and felt her voice scratch along her throat. When had she last spoken? When had she eaten? She couldn’t remember eating, despite cleaning up after lunch. Lunch in her clean kitchen. Not in the broken ramshackle mess behind her. Cleaning while looking out at the wheat before her now, not the corn she’d walked through.

Green lightning forked across the sky. In the clouds a shape loomed, a figure. With a massive head and hunched shoulders it glared down at her from its place above. When the lightning faded, twin eyes of sickly green stared at her through the thick clouds that had overtaken this place Heather couldn’t even be sure was her home anymore. She screamed and ran towards the house.

As she reached the porch, the roof collapsed. The entire structure groaned, before the walls slid apart. Sloughing down into a pile of rotten mulch squirming with worms. Only the porch remained. Heather stared at it with wide eyes, as another streak of lightning lit the world. The rumble of thunder chasing the light back into darkness.

A scream tore from her throat as she stood there in the rain, shadow creatures lurking somewhere behind her in a field she couldn’t trust. Then she saw something in the soggy ruins of her home. What she believed was her home. She stepped towards it, seeing the glint of metal. Stepping onto a fallen board that melted beneath her foot, Heather set eyes upon a corpse. Skeletal and wearing the remains of a service uniform from the war, along with the broad brimmed helmet covered in a mesh perched upon its head. It stared at her with one remaining eyeball in its socket, strings of flesh clinging to the eternal grin of its bony face.

In the corpse’s hands was a rifle. Polished and gleaming. She glanced back, saw the figures looming at the edge of her lawn now. Faceless entities that stared at her without eyes. She shuddered and turned back to the corpse and grasped the rifle. Tried to pry it free, but the gripping hands wouldn’t relinquish its prize.

Blood coursed down from under its helmet, and Heather felt a sticky warmth under her hands. She looked down and saw blood congealing around her fingers. Tried to let go but couldn’t. She wrestled with the corpse, and glanced back. The shadows were at the edge of the ruins now. Looming there. Another flash of lightning and the figure in the clouds glared at her, the hints of tentacles squirming beyond the clouds.

Heather screamed again, and pulled, trying to free herself from the bloody corpse. It’s jaw swung open and a grating laugh coursed outwards. Echoing across the yard. Pain grated through her fingers, down to the sinew up her wrists as she strained against the congealing molasses like blood. It crept up her arms, bubbling with small pops as it climbed higher and higher, the corpse laughing at her all the while.

The jaw fell into its lap, and sunk down into the mulch that had been her home, and behind her whispers coursed through the air. Whispers she faintly recognized from a life she thought left behind. Whispers of friends and family all buried.

“Leave me alone,” Heather cried, and was answered by the flash of thunder. She threw her head back, trying to pull free, and stared up at the sky. Thick drops of rain pelted her face as she saw the figure beyond the clouds once more. Thick tentacles began to squirm through the black, hundreds of them, thousands, extending to the horizon. Slime dropped from them, and Heather screamed out.

“No,” the answer came with the thunder that shook her bones. She couldn’t tell if the word was in the thunder… or was the thunder. Her tears were lost in the rain that pelted her face, and she looked down once more. The ruins were surrounded by those shadowing figures now, their spindly arms lifted, too long fingers pointing directly at her.

The corpse shifted, and Heather stumbled, her foot getting stuck in hardened wood. She looked down, at her ankle, trapped in what had been sludge and rot and was now a solid plank. Her eyes slid back to the jawless corpse, worms wriggling in its maw. A thick black tongue squirming amid them as the worms fell over its chest. Heather yanked again and the corpse shifted again, its helmet tumbling off and rolling away to show the top of the dead man’s skull.

Green light blazed in its empty socket now, burning into Heather’s soul.

“There is no escape. Not for you. Not ever again,” it rumbled. Or was it the beast above? She wasn’t sure. She pulled again, but the corpse was stiff once more, heavy as concrete.

There was a loud crack, and a split formed down the centre of the skull. From brows all the way back until Heather lost sight of it. Black slime oozed from within, pouring down the sides, over the stringy meat that clung to its cheekbones. Slowly, the skull began to open. The slime bubbled out, then stopped flowing as the pieces of bone ground together at the nose. Dust flowed down into the slime, making it thick and chunky, but the smell was of sex, and sweat.

Images of a panting woman upon her back, breasts covered in lipstick marks and hanging off to the sides of her chest, skin glistening with sweat. Heat stirred unbidden in Heather’s core, and she shook her head, bringing herself back to reality, but the smell remained. The carnal scent.

The skull continued to flower, chips of it cracking off and falling into the darkness within.

Another flash of lightning and Heather saw squirming within. A nest within the cage of bone, gray and slimy. Squirming around themselves. Like thick worms, but Heather knew something was wrong. Far too thick, too long, and moving more like snakes. She felt her breath quickening as the wind buffeted around her. Shards of ice snapping through the air and cutting at her cheeks, her clothes.

Thin trickles of scarlet ran down her skin, her moth eaten jacket snapping and coming away in tatters upon the wind. Bits of ice cut and tore at her clothes, more and more skin showing to the world as she pulled again. The thick blood started to stretch and she screamed out and looked to the sky in frustration.

Thousands of eyeballs opened above her amid the dangling tentacles, like the clouds were a thick sheet of skin. Heather stopped, her hair snapping around her face as she stared at whatever was above her. They were massive, each looking larger than the sun in the sky. Round and yellow, with deeply green irises they stared at her, even from the horizon. All while she was stripped naked, the ruins of her clothes fluttering away upon the wind. Carried out into the fields of barley.

Her cheeks flushed, images of a stage before her now. Silk slipping off her shoulder as she smiled out from the spotlight into the audience lurking in shadow. The image was fake, a memory that didn’t exist. She knew that. Thought she knew that. But it felt real, a memory. Not a fantasy. She shuddered under the stare of those eyes, feeling the heat growing between her thighs. Starting to dribble down her legs.

Not one of those eyes looked anywhere, except at her. She should have felt ashamed. People would tell her she should be embarrassed. But she wasn’t. She was aroused, the lust flashing in her mind against the brick of her fear. Cracking it as she chewed on her lip. Hard enough to leave a bruise, almost to spill blood. She looked down to the skull again, the writhing gray mass of slimy things still within.

Until a tip wriggled over the side. Running down over the corpse’s face, and twisted upwards. Pointing at Heather. Starting to stretch across the open air towards her. More of more tentacles slithered out from the skull. Dripping fluids across the bits of chopped lumber that had been her home. Or someone’s home. She couldn’t trust her mind. Not anymore. So instead she just watched the tentacles coming towards her naked form, giving up her struggle to escape. Some deep part of herself coming to the surface.

Her fear was lost amid the rain soaking her skin, with the evidence of something else dripping down her thighs. Thighs the tentacles were starting to wind around, climbing higher. She gasped at their warmth, the slickness of them as they looped over her hips and around her midriff. Slime ran down into her navel, pooling in it before running in a single rivulet down to her crotch. Her breasts rose and fell with heavy breaths as deeply buried fantasies became all too real flesh.

Breasts that were soon entwined with the grey tendrils. Dragged across her stiff nipples and between the soft curves, before they slipped upwards to her shoulders. Down her still bound arms, more around her neck, and forced her head back. Her hair bounced along her back as more tentacles slithered across her shoulder blades, slime getting caught in the locks.

A moan despite herself escaped her lips, spilled into the air, making the tens of thousands of eyes above quiver. The descending fleshy stalactites from the sky squirmed in response. It was a perverse delight. With sounds somewhere between gasps and moans, Heather stared up at the eldritch audience. Slime running in thick streams over her flesh now as the tips of the tentacles squirmed along her neck and crested her jawline. Each breath drew her skin along the writhing tentacles crawling along her flesh. Each inhale caressing herself upon them, each exhale encouraging them to squirm further upwards as they crawled along her cheeks, over her brows.

Soon the tendrils encroached upon her lips. The thick slime began to run into her mouth, dripped off her teeth to patter along her tongue before hitting the back of her throat. Heather couldn’t bring herself to resist, even as her fingers twitched inside the goo that trapped her. Her nails scraped along the wood of the rusted old rifle, but she couldn’t look away from the watchers. The audience amid the clouds, hinting at whatever terrors lurked beyond.

Then two tentacles slid into her mouth, pulling at the corners of her lips. They twirled around her tongue, and she groaned. For a moment she was nineteen again, in the back of a boy’s truck. His fly down, her blouse open as her lips wrapped around his cock. The image gusted in dust as she thought of the back alley of the pub. The music within wafting out, the concrete against her knees. She didn’t know the man leaning against the wall with one elbow. Just knew his cock tasted good. His release even better.

As the image scattered amid countless others she’d taken between her lips, the tentacles squirmed between her legs. Two of them grinding against her clit and teasing over the entrance of her sex. Her hips bucked, and a distorted moan responded to the thunder crashing about her. The tentacles continued past her cunt, and up the cleft of her rear, probed at her ass and squirmed within. The tight ring of muscle slowly expanding for them as slime dripped from her.

She blinked at the watchers above. The eyes quivering, staring. Unblinking and making her quake in delight as tentacles curled around the root of her tongue. They teased at the back of her throat, with their essence coursing down. She didn’t gag, just let out that twisted moan as she felt them push downwards. Her throat bulged from their invasion.

More crept up her thighs, and lanced into her cunt. They pushed between the tentacles already coursing over her entrance, pressing them into her nether lips. Her back arched, pressing her breasts tight against the flesh constraints wrapped around her form. It only made them constrict around her, and writhe more. The ones in her rear plunging higher, deeper. She felt them within her, twisting and corrupting her flesh within. Something ancient and unnatural reshaping her from within. Claiming her.

Slime bubbled at her lips, black and frothy now. It gushed down her chin and along her neck, dribbled over her breasts. But still she welcomed it. Moaned for it, making the slime pop and splash on her cheeks. It flooded her as her hips bucked and ground against the invasion. It filled her eyes until there was no sight anymore, and ran from her tear ducts among the speckles on her cheeks.

The thought of all those lovers came back. The cocks she took, the cum she swallowed. The flavour of women on some only stirred her to more depravity. She had drank their seed, savoured the taste and moaned. Been called ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ and shivered at the perverse titles with debaucherous glee.

Now here she was. In her escape. Or so she thought. Consumed by it all. But something was wrong, wriggling in her mind as she writhed within her constraints. Unable to see but feeling the watchers’ gazes upon nude form. Something wrong with her world that she couldn’t place, even as the tentacles burrowed deeper inside her. Squirmed within her and flesh grew in her mouth. Petal like flaps that pushed out, squirming with thick cilia on the insides. Heather extended them, wrapped them around the tendrils plunging down her throat through her mouth. Stroked them with lustful glee.

“No, escape. No, death.”

The sky rumbled with the words, shook her bones as they exploded around her. She could only moan, not wanting escape. Only wanting the pleasure as the eldritch creation ravaged her.

A wave of pleasure crashed through her. Rolling through her flesh as she came. Her distorted muffled moans a cry of submission to whatever entity had claimed her. No name for her master, just sensation. Just the lust that twisted her mind and pulled her deeper into the black. Into the shadows.

As she started to descend from climax, the tentacles tore out of her. Unwrapped from her. She fell, no ground beneath her. Suddenly free hands grasped for anything, but nothing was there. She splashed into muck. Thick mud that enveloped her, pulled her deep. Her eyes were wide, but she still could not see. Could only feel the dimming sensation of the hundred thousand eyes. The ones that had watched her succumb to her lust. The ones that had given her a thrill.

But soon, that too was gone. Silence engulfed her. Sensation was nothing but strange floating, though her lungs did not burn as she descended. Deeper, deeper still. Until her back hit something solid. Slowly, the muck ran off her naked form. She blinked, but still saw only the pitch black. She thrashed, and her knees struck wood. Cracked and rotten.

She screamed, and it echoed around her. Lust pulled away again for fear. Consumed her mind as she punched and kicked from within her little box. The wood gave way and dirt began to shower over her. She felt the fleshy petals in her mouth squirm against her tongue, press against her fangs. She clawed, and scraped and her hand sank into the dirt above her.

Worms, soil, and bits of rock surrounded her arm as she plunged it upwards. Scratching and digging as time ticked by in the blackness. Heartbeats became long uncountable moments as she struggled and dug and slowly ascended. The dirt dragging along her naked skin as she pushed upwards, unsure if she was even going the right way. Or if she was even going up.