Short Story: Congealed

Beth feels a crisp, bright pain growing behind her left eye. She groans and rolls over, pressing the left side of her face deep into the dark hills of her pillow. It’s too early. She reaches toward her nightstand and blindly feels around for a bottle of aspirin as memories of the night before bubble up in her mind:

Strobing pink and purple lights; distorted, thumping music; cigarettes and sweaty fingers.

A mysterious woman in a timeless suit. Her dark eyes find Beth through the crowd.

Beth's hand finds the pill bottle. She fumbles with it for a moment, eyes still blurry from sleep. 

“Comfidem,” a voice behind her gurgles softly. Beth drops the bottle of aspirin and swerves to peer behind her, eyes now wide and clear. She doesn’t see anyone, but as she looks around the room, everything is off. The mirror by her dresser has a new crack spiderwebbing through it, Beth’s jewelry and cigarettes are all over the floor, and her dining table is on its side, surrounded by congealing wine. What happened last night? 

“Hello?” Beth calls out anxiously, feeling around in the covers for her phone. 

“Comfidem,” the voice gurgles back. Beth jumps out of bed and spins around. 

“Who’s there?” 

Beth waits for a response. She stands alert in the middle of her disheveled apartment, but everything is quiet for a moment. She searches for her phone in the soft folds of her bed again. She fails. 

"Co-omfide-em." The voice is now barely a whisper, but it feels close by. 

Beth quietly tiptoes over to the kitchen and grabs a knife, struggling to calm her shaking limbs. A sharp pain jolts from the top of her spine and rushes all the way through her. More memories from the night before: 

“What’s in this?” Beth asks the mysterious, timeless woman.

“Celestial vision, love. And a little ecstasy to make it go down easier.”  The woman purrs into Beth's ear.

Beth swallows the tiny heart-shaped pill without water. 

Then the handsome woman climbs through the crowd, onto the stage, and behind a drum kit. 

Each bass kick feels like lava in Beth’s chest. Each snare tap sets off sparklers in her brain.

Relief washes over Beth. I’m probably just still high. Her arm drops to her side, but she keeps the knife loosely in hand as she wanders through her apartment, looking for her phone or maybe the dark-eyed woman passed out somewhere. What was her name? 

“Hello?” Beth pleads, making her way through the mess of the night before. She didn’t find her phone or the woman. Did we do all this to my apartment?  

“Co-omfidem,” the voice calls out again. Beth tries to ignore it and heads to the kitchen. Nope, not real. I need some fucking coffee.  

“Comfide-em!” The gurgling is louder this time. A bolt of pain punches into Beth's brain and gut at the same time, pushing her backward onto the kitchen floor. Gasping, she looks at the tile beside her and sees the spilled wine, now more like dark, smooth jelly. She notices a knife on the ground, hiding in the shadows of the table, dotted with wine—or is it blood? 

She looks down at the knife in her hand—it now looks the same as the one on the ground, covered in gooey crimson. Beth drops the knife she’s been holding, but instead of hearing it clank coldly on the ground beside her, she hears the gurgling again. This time, it starts soft and slow and builds into a kind of rhythm: “Com . . . fid . . . em. Com . . . fidem. Comfidem, confidem.” The rhythm brings her back to the night before: 

She stands in the middle of the crowded venue, swaying to the music with her eyes closed. 

She doesn’t need to see the band because each sound they make erupts and blooms in her body. 

She can feel them all—the sounds, the musicians and motions making them. 

But she can’t feel her feet. 

“Comfidem, comfidem, comfidem.” The sound is persistent now and slowly growing louder. 

“I get it, okay? No more drugs for a while!” Beth shouts back. She tries to block the voice from her mind, but the harder she tries, the louder it gets, and the louder it gets, the hotter and sharper it feels burrowing through her spine. 

“COMFIDEM!” It yells and burns into her. 

“What do you want?” She screams back even louder. Her apartment is silent for a moment. Beth waits and listens.

"Hello?" Nothing responds. 

Beth exhales. Thank god. She stands up, finishes taking the aspirin she dropped, and walks to her coffee pot, slowly calming down and savoring the silence as she begins her morning routine of soft coffee grounds and slippery water.

But before she can press Brew, the doorknob to her living room closet turns to one side. And then the other. As it does, it creaks in rhythm, groaning “co-o-om-fi-i-de-em.” The sound vibrates through the center of Beth, hot like lava. She leans against the kitchen counter, grasping at her back in agony. 

“Co-omfide-em.” She feels soft movement beneath her shirt: a small twinge, a subtle shift. She twists her body around and pulls her shirt up to find a small wound on her back, stained with shimmering pinot noir. 

“Comfidem.” The edges of the wound pucker and twitch as the sound comes out. 

“What in the . . .” Beth pokes at the wound, watching it respond to her touch. “Is that you talking to me?” 

“Mmm,” the wound hums; Beth feels its vibrations from the inside out. 

“I must actually be going crazy,” she muses out loud. 

“No-o-o,” the wound responds as it spits out a few small clots of blood, discolored edges of skin curling up and forming sounds. 

“Nope. No. This is definitely not real.” 

“Co-ome fi-ind me-e the-en,” the wound sputters as the closet doorknob rattles. Terror washes over Beth. What is going on?  

“Co-ome fi-ind me-e. Co-ome find me. Come find me, come find me.” The wound echoes like a drumline, punctuated by the creaking, turning doorknob, as heat builds in Beth’s spine. 

“Fine!” Beth stands up and walks to the closet, worried about what kind of monsters she’ll find. As she puts her hand on the knob, it relaxes and stops moving. She opens the door slowly. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness and shadows. She gasps and jumps back, both hands on her mouth. 

Memories well up in her eyes:

Beth walks back to her apartment hand-in-hand with the timeless, dark-eyed woman in a suit. The air feels too humid for how many stars are out, and cigarette smoke hangs around them like a fog.

In the middle of the street beneath a traffic light, the woman stops Beth, pulls her in close, and kisses her with flower-petal lips. Beth's head echoes with sparkles and snare taps.

Their bodies mold together with so much freedom and abandon that they topple Beth's kitchen table and break her dresser mirror. And then some. 

Beth's skin is tingling and covered in sweat. As she pours the woman a second glass of wine, she feels a shadow growing over her shoulder. The shadow purrs, then softly growls.

Beth turns around as if her feet aren't her own, still pouring rich wine into the wanton air. She stands frozen like that until the bottle is empty, staring at the creature growing and blooming before her.

The handsome woman is now eight feet tall with glassy spider eyes and long, twitching centipede arms. Dark petals cover her body like patchwork skin, and as she breaths and growls, they flutter. For a moment, Beth loses herself staring at the shimmering, velvet petals.

Suddenly, her feet start working again. Her fear starts working again. She grabs a knife with her free hand and thrusts it in between the petals. It glides through them without resistance. The creature laughs. The knife drops.

Beth tries to run to the front door, but the handsome creature expands to fill the space, half-purring, half-growling: "Trust me..." 

Beth runs the opposite direction and hides in the closet, holding the door shut with all her strength. But it's not enough.

The creature stands before Beth, staring down with her many dark, timeless eyes. Suddenly, Beth feels the music from earlier that night at the club. She feels her nerves calm as she stares at the shadowy petals shimmering in rhythm all over the creature's body. 

The petals begin to twitch and curl back in the middle of the serpentine figure, revealing a cavernous, unfolding mouth. Inside, Beth sees millions of glistening stars.

"Come find me," the dark-eyed creature roars as two long, sharp tendrils reach out from her celestial mouth and cradle Beth. One pierces into Beth's back; the other behind her left ear. 

Beth feels like she's floating through the stars. The creature feels less hungry. Less alone.

Later, in the early hours of the morning, a woman in a suit casually wipes her mouth, kisses Beth's lifeless cheek, and smiles. She closes the closet door with Beth inside, leaves Beth's apartment, and lights a cigarette as the sun comes up on her long walk home.

Beth looks down at her own lifeless body in her closet. She gently touches the skin behind her ear and feels a puncture wound—it matches the one on the corpse before her. She kneels down and cradles herself. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. 

“Me-e to-oo,” both wounds reply. "No-w, go-o fi-ind he-er."

Beth stands up, opens the closet door, and sees stars.