Extract from Bury Me in Snow (prose, 496 words)
(Content warning: substance abuse and mild body horror)
He unlocked the door, bursting in to find a stranger on the bed. The window was open, and a film was playing on the television on the desk. There was something else on the desk too, bottles of some substance.
“Do I know you?” Bat shrugged. “You look familiar.” He couldn’t reply; his jaw felt tight and wouldn’t cooperate, so he shrugged again. “Oh, I know,” the stranger said, “Twig, that’s your name.” Twig shrugged. Maybe it was. He couldn’t remember it anymore. “Or am I Twig?”
Maybe-Twig turned to face the television once again, stripping off his boxers so that the two of them were naked together in solidarity. Aliens danced over the screen, with huge stomachs that kept blocking whatever was going on in the scene. He swore at them to leave him alone and took a swing at the television. It cracked and splintered his knuckles, new blood mixing with dried blood. Had he hurt himself before? He couldn’t remember.
The door swung open, and he turned to see who had entered. It was a stranger, the same stranger whom he had been sitting next to for the past hour or day, however long it had been.
He wasn’t fully naked but was missing his socks and shirt. His hair had been buzzed down the left side, and he crawled to the bed on his hands and knees. Tears streamed down his face, and he stared up at him, eyes bloodshot and bulging out of his skull.
“Bat,” he said, “I’ve made a mistake.” Oh, so his name was Bat. That meant that this other man must be Twig. His friend.
Bat knelt beside him and hugged him, bare skin against bare skin. “What did you do?” he asked. It was slurred, but it still made sense to him at least.
His friend cried into his shoulder, leaving wetness. He didn’t answer, only sobbed. As they sat there together, the walls ran with a waterfall of his blood. Brain matter stones and intestine vines streamed from the ceiling. Someone screeched at him, which made his ears begin to bleed, too. He was losing too much blood, and his friend wouldn’t stop crying.
Everything was so incredibly loud, and he rushed out the door before it could deafen him. But it was too late, and he rocked back and forth. Back and forth. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe, only felt his heart beating uncontrollably fast.
His vision resurfaced as footsteps approached again. A green demon crouched over his body with fangs and tusks, odorous, and dripping with venom.
“No!” His voice belonged to someone else.
He was the green demon, horns and spikes began to grow from his spine and his temples. They ripped his human body open, and he bled treacle over the carpet, writhing in agony as he took on each aspect of the monster. He was so unbearably hot that he must have been in Gehinnom.