Revenant

 

He knelt in the wet grass, water and mud staining his trousers. Bulging eyes burrowed into me with irritation and fury. He was barely managing to balance, hands bound behind his back, torso wiggling in the air, teetering on the edge of balance and incapacity. Any moment he could fall and be rendered even more helpless, if that were possible.

“Harlot!” he spat at me, spray flying off of his lips. 

“Mhm,” I replied, sitting on a felled log nearby. We were outside of the town he owned whose windows were boarded up and whose lights were doused. Fear lived and breathed in the village. 

“You fucking stupid whore. Release me!” 

“Or what?” I turned my head and looked over at him for the first time in a while. 

He sputtered, fury in his red face. “I’ll… I’ll…”

I inhaled sharply, frustrating growing. “Have your buddies take care of it?”

“What… How did you…”

Our eyes met and he flinched from my inhuman stare. 

“Is that why?”

“Yes. That’s why I married you.”

“You knew?” He looked as though he would be sick.

“You’re a worthless little man playing power games and it got two people killed. Every minute I spent with you was to lead you here. Do you understand that? You’re that incapable. Fooled by a woman.” I stood up and pulled his hair so he looked up at me. “And you’ll die embarrassed by it all.”

He spit before I could turn his face away. I flicked the wetness off of my cheek and let his hair go. A soft chuckle escaped my lips and I turned away, walking back to my perch. 

“Was it worth it? Was killing her worth it? Worth all the deaths of your friends? Your town’s fear?”

“She was nothing.”

I couldn’t help but curl my lip. “And now you are nothing.”

“Is that what you are? Some harpy bent on righting the wrongs of useless whores?”

A bitter laugh came from my lips and was swallowed by the dark. “Close.”

His eyes widened. “Fu-fury?”

I smirked and said nothing. He didn’t need to know the truth.

Around us, the crickets grew suddenly quiet and the owls stopped swopping in the moonless night. The swaying wind seemed to disappear, hiding from whatever lurked in the darkness. I lifted the lantern from the ground just enough to see the edge of the treeline where the cemetery laid just beyond. 

I smelled him before I saw him. The putrescent stink of decaying body invaded the air, making my throat tighten. I opened my mouth to breathe through my teeth and heard the man gagging behind me. 

“He’s coming! We must away! Let me up!”

The muddy earth squished beneath his knees and he grunted, struggling to find a way upward. The rope binding his wrists to his ankles tightened with each fraught tug until he whimpered in understanding. I would’ve smiled if I hadn’t been focused on what rose from the cemetery just beyond sight. 

Moments after the smell came the first sounds of the creature. A faint squishing as organs and bloated flesh squelched with each forward step. Blood and fluid glinted on the exposed stomach of the once man. Maggots ate away at the decaying flesh, now and then falling to the ground only to be squashed underfoot. Thick-fingered hands were splayed open at his sides as his swollen eyes caught sight of the man behind me.

The being released a gargling sound that I assumed was laughter. Blue lips pulled back into a hateful sneer. One finger rose, pointing at the bound man.

“You,” he growled. “You are the one who has brought hell down. Hell’s will.” He flexed his hands and then curled them into fists. “My hands.”

“Wait!” the man screamed behind me. 

The revenant grinned but didn’t pause. Despite his decay he was a fierce emissary of a world beyond with the hunger for revenge etched into his swollen features. Once he had been a man, a beautiful man, I wagered, and now suffering brought him the haunted edge of the unnatural. 

“Wait! I have an offering!” the bound man cried again. 

I laughed, tearing my gaze away from the undead emissary to the whimpering creature I had captured. 

“Oh yes,” the revenant spoke. His voice was the echo of a thousand suffering souls, enflamed by the unholy powers of demons. “What will you offer, Ozim? Your wealth? Your home? Your town?” The being gestured towards the village, a knowing smile on his lips. “How far will you go to survive?”

Ozim puffed, panicked breaths coming from his lips. “Arenol. Please. This is…” his eyes darted to me. “My wife.”

The man turned, grey-blue unhealthy eyes settling on me. “Your wife? You were unwed but when last I drew breath.” He stood, gazing at me.

“Take her. A wife for a wife.”

I tilted my head, brows raised at Ozim. 

Arenol, or what was left of him, looked down at his bound focus. “Then how did you end up here, Ozim? Bound and offered? Should not you have brought your woman this way?”

My lips pursed to repress a smile. “I offer Ozim to you. To do as you will. Preferably slowly.”

The revenant looked back to me again, his strange gaze transfixing. “Did he tell you what he did? Did you marry him knowing who he is?”

“He didn’t. But I did.”

His eyes narrowed and he moved towards me, closing the distance with frightening speed. I could feel the power radiating off of his living corpse. A hand rose, nearly touching my face but hovering just beyond against the roundness of my cheek. “Explain yourself.”

“I know what he did. I know what he covets.” I turned my face to look at him, letting his fingertips brush my skin. They were wet with decay and smelled of liquifying human remains.

“He covets?”

My eyes met his. “Our marriage is passionless, despite his efforts. I know what he did to Karie.”

The revenant watched my eyes, waiting for me to flinch. “You offer me your body and your husband’s?”

“I want him to watch and know that he is going to die while you take me.” 

Heat rose in me and I shivered at his closeness. 

A hint of a smile touched his lips. He moved his hand from my cheek to my throat, thumb caressing the flesh. Swollen lips pressed against the skin, tasting me. A fat tongue played over the pulse and sent chills down my spine. I gave a soft whimper of lust and he moved a hand to pull me against his body roughly.

“Is this true, Ozim? Does your woman deny you?”

The man blustered, swearing beneath his breath. 

Arenol chuckled into my hair and moved behind me. I set the lantern down between us and the kneeling witness. A hand slid down my back, nails jagged and bloody from crawling out of a coffin, and tugged at the dress I wore, pulling it ever upward. 

“Watch, Ozim. Even in death I am twice the man you are.”

Fat fingers slid along my inner thigh, moving ever higher. They tickled the lips of my entrance, teasing and dancing, sending electric impulses through my body. I gasped as the cold digits slid inward, testing the wetness that was there. “Your woman is eager, Ozim. Wet with lust.”

The fingers slid out and moved around to my lips, coating my chin as I pulled the fingers into my mouth, carefully to only lap at them for fear the meat would come off. He groaned behind me, pressing hips against my entrance. I could feel the swollen length within him, hardening despite his decay. A moan slid from his lips, maggots falling with it to land upon my back and then to the earth below.

Ozim stared, transfixed and red in frustration. His hands worked at the knots, ignoring that they grew ever tighter. Curses flew from his lips, his chin covered in drool, while he became unable to tear his gaze away. 

Arenol’s fingers moved from my lips and downward, pulling up the dress so that it moved over my head and came to rest on the log. My nakedness made the revenant groan, hands roaming over my stomach and breasts, cupping and groping as Ozim watched. I felt the undead’s smile as he leaned me back against him, face half concealed by my wild hair.

“I see you want her, Ozim,” he chuckled. The man’s breeches tensed with his own need, a slight bulge revealing his ensnared body. 

“How would you take it? As you did my wife? By force? On her back? Screaming for you to stop?”

I slid a hand behind me, caressing the creature’s stomach, fingers trailing over the bloody wound that still oozed and festered from where he had been killed. The hand slid lower, traversing down to where he had become engorged. He hissed in relief, eyes sliding shut as he pressed forward into my hand. 

“You see how she craves it, Ozim? Your own wife. If only you could satisfy her.”

I turned, eyes looking in the revenant’s before I kissed the decaying flesh of his throat, tongue sliding over the wet and blackened flesh before trailing downward. He tasted of rot and dirt, a combination foul and festering. I swallowed back my urge to gag and focused on exploring his chest, once hardened muscles writhing with insects and larva. 

My body knelt as I went down until I pulled the tip of his length into my mouth. Fingers wound into my hair, guiding me gently along his hardness so that he controlled my movement and yet let me explore at will. I swallowed him, pulling all I could into my throat and gagging as the taste filled my senses. He groaned, hips thrusting forward to push just a bit deeper. 

I gasped for air as he pulled back, only to have him slide inward again. Each thrust was power and mastery, claiming my mouth as his own. Writhing bugs fell down atop me from his body as he gazed down at me, only to turn his head and look at Ozim, triumphant smirk on his face. 

“Has she ever knelt for you? Supplicated to you? Were you so disgusting she could not bring herself to touch you?” 

His pumping grew faster, filling my senses with his body before he gently released my hair. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered. A hand touched my chin, guiding me upward to stand beside him. He turned me so that I faced Ozim again. “Tell him.”

I spit out a maggot that had fallen from my lover and smirked, looking at the expression of revulsion that came over Ozim’s face. “I want you to fuck me, Arenol. Like my husband could never do. Fill me with your seed. Make me scream and beg for more. Be the man I need.”

Ozim flushed, embarrassment and shame rising to the surface. 

“Fucking whore,” he spat. 

The revenant grabbed one of my shoulders, holding me steady as he thrust upward, suddenly pushing inside of me, swollen and engorged length filling me. A cry of pleasure escaped my lips, body tensing in response to his sudden presence.

“Yes,” I whimpered. “Fuck me. Please.” 

There was no hesitation as the undead man did as I demanded and begged. He slid inside, pounding into me with a fervor I had not felt in any living mortal. The powerful hips banged against me, the decaying meat within somehow still as hard as a rock and igniting my body with need and ecstasy.

Our bodies rocked together, my hips moving back to meet his every stroke. His groans began to join my chorus of moans as we lit up the world around us with arousal. Ozim whimpered from his kneeling position, twitching as he tried to release himself. The bulge in his trousers grew, hot and hard and unable to be tended.

“I love how you fuck me.” I cried out, half speaking half whimpering as he masterfully moved within me. Pressure rose with each thrust and pushed into my body, filling me as he did, until I found it erupting and flowing, sending spasms through my body as I released upon his length. 

The revenant held me, body still slamming into me as I trembled and cried in his arms. His fingers gripped me, leaving bruises where none had been, as he cried out. The undead’s hips stilled as his body shuddered and he spilled within, groaning softly once his speed began to drip from my entrance. 

Our lips met, a kiss filled with decay and dead skin and wriggling maggots.  I opened my mouth to him, tasting him fully as he slowly slid from my depths. Gently we parted, eyes looking into each other until we turned in unison to our captive witness. 

Arenol kissed my forehead. “Are you satisfied now?” 

“I am,” I murmured. “Thank you.”

“May I make you a widow?” His fingers touched my chin, turning my gaze to his.

I nodded. 

The revenant stepped away from me as new screams of agony filled the forest, replacing the ecstatic song we had composed just moments ago.