Incubo

Trigger warning: upsetting images, depictions of assault

Piper hadn't slept easily since that horrid night. Images of horns and raining blood—the spine-chilling sounds of Blake's horrifying shrieks as he got incinerated—and the awful way, he curled his retractable claws—still ravaged and plagued the nine circles of hell of her brain. When she slept as much as even a compact wink—she was suddenly accosted and blinded with incandescent dreams of malignant spirits and frightful fiends. 

If the young Catholic priest had been right about Blake and his devilish intentions—Piper, knew he'd be back eventually and—that she'd have to be ready for the diabolic return of his end-of-the-world magnum opus. 

After his exorcism, later demise and resulting death—Piper scoured Blake's apartment, looking for god-knows-what in any vestige of clues that would inform her of his next calculating move. Unfortunately, she found little to nothing. The only thing she really knew about him was that he worked as a bartender in a hole-in-the-wall establishment called Club Phobia. It was the same place where she had stumbled upon, ordering a poisonous drink and first meeting him. 

Piper had not known much about him when they began dating and had learned even less when they began sleeping together and at one point—began living together. Blake was as mysterious as he was frightening—with habits like watching her sleep, invading her privacy, and turning up at places where she didn't expect him to be—becoming a part of the regular abnormalcy of their budding relationship.

Although, they were both seemingly and wholly obsessed with one another—Piper always wondered if there was more —more to his fixations, adulation, and deifying worship of her spirit as well as her—incubating womb-body.

Piper was well on her way to her second month of pregnancy—unbeknownst to her, when the man she later learned was a priest, approached her, and warned her about Blake's origins and infernal agendas. She did not believe him outright and continued to pursue her relationship with Blake against the priest's psychic advice. 

It was the following night when she came home to find the gelid truth—that Blake was not altogether honest with her. Not only was he a chronic liar but he was not even entirely human.

In fact, Piper had walked straight into Blake’s exorcism—that night in their shared apartment flat.

Ever since the bloody fateful night of the exorcism, the young priest—Alexie Bonham had been looking after Piper and making sure that her pregnancy ran smoothly and without respite. At first, he vowed to kill her and terminate her baby on the spot, but soon he too took a liking to her—and tried to save her and the unborn child. He stopped by to take her to church, dauntlessly arming her with holy water, the scripture, a metallic talisman, and wooden crosses that he placed at each and every corner of her angular, heart-shaped bedroom. 

Piper was grateful for his care, his advising, and his overall religiosity, but she was tired of living like a rat caught in a mousetrap. She felt as if she had stayed that way forever—she'd eternally be the cheese luring Blake in—completely helpless when he returned to unlatch his jaw and bear his teeth. 

It had been some months since Chloe was born and she still hadn't heard anything from Alexie. In fact, to her utter surprise and vehement disappointment—it seemed as though Alexie had skipped the birth and then town, completely.

All lonesome and slicked wet with scarlet red arterial—Piper, by herself had given birth to Chloe in the remnants of a bunker, underground. It was the same clandestine one, Alexie had shown her—some odd weeks beforehand. After the bodily expulsion, with Chloe in hand no less, she rang his doorbell but had ineffectually—found nothing and no one. Furthermore, when she visited the church Alexie brought her to the very first time they conjoined—and shorthandedly asked for him by codename—everyone including his close friends and loved ones—claimed to not know of him or be aware of any outward preexistence of the young man.

It was then, she became extremely and immensely worried. 

During their alliance and developing codependence, Piper had not divulged to Alexie of the strangely occurring happenings surrounding her pregnancy—such as her hemorrhaging and sometimes prophetic dreams—or the way her skin burned when she touched any or all consecrated paraphernalia. She even withheld the truth from him—of her secret meetings with the godless Blake, in which she made love to him via dreams for weeks after the exorcism. And of course, she had not the chance to alert him to the construction of Chloe’s supernatural nursery—the one that was magically built seemingly overnight—a mere day before her climatic nativity.

It seemed to Piper that she was not, altogether horror-struck and frightened of Blake like she was supposed to be. He was an amoral demon and a lawless sinner—but still, those things didn’t immediately register—and did not stir or convulse her. On the contrary—she was growing to be deeply fearful of the suspicious nature of Chloe—wanting to discern what or who the baby really was—and its true identity. In the days that followed, she wondered openly if the baby creature was only masking itself as an innocent human child—for the fortunate occurrence when it was safely out of quiescence or simply grown strong enough and old enough to escape. Too, Piper wondered if the baby had already even developed—daemonic powers and abilities.

Part of this reasoning was attributed to Piper's suspicion, she was living inexplicably with a poltergeist. At night, when Chloe was neatly swaddled and tucked in—the bedroom curtains would blow harshly even as all of the windows were sealed and perfectly weather-proof and shut. The rood cloths continuously fell off of all the crucifixes in sight and they would ritualistically turn upside down when Piper walked with Chloe in the night. Strawberry gashes appeared on the underside of her arms and legs after the stroke of midnight and out-of-body-experiences including somnambulism and sleeptalking had become quite the frequent thing during soporific shuteye.

Piper was wholly and completely haunted by the encompassing thought of Blake. Even with the perils, she kept to herself—she still loved the small spittle-producing infant that sat in her hellish crib. Above all else, because Chloe was her only child and firstborn; Piper knew she would inevitably protect her—from any or all suspected foes—no matter what circumstances and no matter how it petrified her. 

But what if she could no longer protect and cosset her newborn child or—explicably, herself?

In the days that followed Piper's latter pregnancy, Chloe’s timely birth—and Alexie’s seemingly unnatural disappearance, Piper had been scouring cloaked sources—in a desperate effort to prepare. She inquisitively began perusing the deep web and backdoor websites—where topics on demonology, mythical folklore, UFO alien visitation, and satanic ritual could be found, perchance. She even visited occultist libraries where she would listen to the poppycock talk of arcane esoterics and have maddened mystics both read her and the baby’s tenebrous aura via womb.

Upon one particular psychic evaluation—a fortune-telling woman ran from the reading room with vermillion, scarlet lake tears flowing from her eyes—on another account, a local tarot reader flipped a daemon card and too, flipped her demeanor after learning of the familiar alias of the unborn child’s father—and one, elderly eldritch man—who described himself as a ‘wizard’ inspired by magick of the dark ages had visited her in her studio apartment to announce to Piper, that she was to be the harbinger of the apocalypse—with her parasitic cambion baby eating her and then obfuscating blood and guts unto the corners of the world.

Piper had rolled her eyes and kicked him out, but could not—for the life of her, shake the intense feeling that buried in the throat of her doubt.

Later, in a witchcraft book shop—when she viewed ancient depictions and painted cave drawings, logged diaries of pagan cult worship and photographs from the 19th century—they suspiciously matched the half-blood beast from her nightmares—right down to the archaic, iron-red pockmarks on its cheek. She audibly gasped and fled to the nearest exit. From that day, in her mind, sat dormant—were these haunting images stained so deep and vermillion, they clotted swollen and purple in the corner of her cheeks. These Satanic visions—depicting black-haired changelings and hairy-horned goat creatures had been burned into her mind's eye like scarification on skin.

For the entire ending stint of the incubation period, Blake's face haunted her waking nightmares—where she saw only their two collective, nympholepsy bodies—both human and non-human—grinding against one another. With him, beset between her writhing sacrificial legs, his sucking mouth latched onto her undulating, egg-sac shaped breasts and her fingernails, tangled and digging into the pockets of his offal, reptilian skin. She usually awoke moaning, in pain, or mutilated to the point of becoming incarnadine, sore, and war-torn.

Only on the night Chloe was born, did the nightmares finally abate and truly halt. 

But like everything—it was unexplained when the tossing-and-turning began again—suddenly late into this week. Specifically, last night when she stopped breathing for a total of five minutes after waking. And tonight—when the painful, self-immobilizing sleep paralysis returned. Piper could barely sleep a blink before Blake was aloft in hallucination—on top of her chest and choking her.

She wanted to make it all stanch, indefinitely. But without Alexie—she’d have to figure it out by herself. More than anything, she wanted to protect Chloe. Perhaps she thought, with Blake gone—the pip could blossom into a relatively healthy child--and by chance, would become 'normal' by proxy.

At least, this is what Piper hoped for deep down.

Piper had begun dreaming somewhere around witching hour when her mind took a wiry route to a familiar hell-on-earth. There had been a chiaroscurist image forming in her foggy lucidity. A rich and thick specter formed around her bed frame and materialized into an uncanny sculpt of a starless fuzzy brown-eyed man. His indefinite features were inscrutable to the naked eye—as he was—a perplexing, disjointing tangle of arms, legs, genitalia, and appendages.

The shadowy disguise took over Piper’s periphery, elongating over her as if to consume her. She saw jagged teeth protruding from its jaws and horns sharpen from the slope of its sunken head. She opened her own mouth to scream but simply shut it again when no sound rose from her lips. 

Then the mirage vanquished—dissipating into a bluish fire in an instant.

The cries of the newborn baby, behind an adjacent door to hers, tore the flesh of her eyes and ears wide open and—she sat forcefully, upright in her bed.

Since her demonic delivery, Chloe had never cried, not even once. In fact—it was the first time, Piper had even ever heard her speak or even remotely breathe. The sacramental bambino barely wept or baby talked—except for when she wanted milk. For feeding, she always begged—moaning and whining for more and more milk—so much so—she left pools of imbrued blood and welts on every breast nipple sucked on far too long.

Piper, in her rabbit-like fright, looked around the swimming semicircle of darkness and touched her body; from neck to spindly torso. In her searching gaze, she looked down and found her pudendum, exposed. Although she went to sleep fully clothed—her garments were now, abraded and scratched off—tore to bits right down to her transparent babydoll nightgown. Her white cotton underwear was now seen loosely affixed around her ankles—like someone or something had viciously pulled them down in carnal sleep.

She wiped spilling tears from her bloodshot eyes and rinsed them with the open venus fly-trap palms of her lithe hands. Getting up, she checked for any further signs of forced entry, of viscous blood, or of broken furniture. Though inevitably and understandably, her luxurious velvet bed sheets were knifed—they were surprisingly dry, indistinct of ghostly fingerprints, and absent of post-coitus discharge of any kind. 

After inspecting the bed and the sinking putrid hollows of herself—Piper got dressed in a panicked rush, thumbing the baby monitor and slipping into a silk, wine-colored robe as she left. Armed with half maternal instinct and half self-preservation—she dashed down the hallway like a track and field star—where she made her gentle but intrusive way into Chloe’s—the offspring's dampened bedroom.

Upon entrance, Piper lowered her octave and hushed in a warbled bird tone. There was a raw-scented fragrance, perfumed in the air, and Chloe was mewling and bleating, and making soft palate sounds only a feral animal could manage to mutter or bear. Piper tried to reassure and lull the little moppet but it was so caliginous and saturated with a dreadful sinking feeling—she could barely see to walk, let alone attempt to comfort the baby who was clearly in physical or emotional distress.

Jutting out on her left, when she walked, she nearly crashed into the crow-colored wall. Then turning further, she hip-checked the diaper changer (complete with swaddling clothes) and nosedived into the hanging decorations of origami cranes suspended from the ceiling. Reaching her hand up and clicking the paper lantern on, she walked to reach the open-faced bassinet in the murky shadows.

The coverlet of the yellowing baby cot obscured the baby's face. Widow’s silk crêpe hung overhead and formed a canopy nest from which a twinking mobile rang. A lace shroud made the crib look like a coffin instead of a bed.

Piper touched the offspring's head and looked into the casket opening from where she stood. Looking back at her was Chloe, with eyelids half-unbolted. She yawned and blinked so suddenly, with eyes that were so chloris and puke-colored green—they neared the point of being bio-luminescent. Even in the dimly lit room, the child’s pupils seemed to glow in the dark. 

Piper took the unsleeping, cow-heavy jelly baby into her arms and blew raspberries on her belly until she laughed and gargled spit out her bijou mouth. Chloe gaped up at Piper, with adoration, and put one feeble hand onto her Piper's chest. Everything about the child reminded Piper of Blake and for that reason—she couldn’t help but briefly look away.

Piper sang as she breastfed. The lullaby mobile above Chloe’s bed twinkled and played on its own, as it—depicted a starry-eyed, woodland Magi scene. In the daydreaming silence, she sat in the nexus corner of the vampiric bedroom, swaying back-and-forth in a handmade wooden rocking chair. She gazed down at the tiny person she, herself had birthed and thought to herself, "How could Chloe, this perfect apple-cheeked cherub—be anything other than entirely and warmly harmless?"

At this moment, Piper began to barter and ridicule—negotiating harsh truths.

“What if Alexie got it wrong?” she brooded, darkly. “What if there was some halve of a chance--like fifty percent—Chloe was all human and nowhere near a creature bred from an abominable daemon.”

Chloe seemed to sense Piper’s bulging anxiety and stopped her chimeric sucking. Her eyes were expanding with such ferocity and were glowing so brightly Piper was nearly blinded when the child, merely blinked.

In the oneiric eyes of the little child — Piper was God. (This much was obvious.)

When Piper put Chloe back to bed, she arbitrarily began searching. She smoothed Chloe’s fontanelle down against her scalp, scrutinizing each follicle of prickly, short hair and underside of every skin fold. Next, she proceeded to quickly check the flesh of Chloe's stubby legs and arms. There were no preternatural markings — no awkwardly shaped birthmarks, or strange numbers that pointed outwardly to blasphemy.

Piper breathed a sigh of relief and put her hand to her own forehead. Beads of pulpy sweat slid from the length of her neck and down to the nook of her clammy florid breasts.

“What on earth was she thinking?” Piper chided herself. “—And what if she did find something—what was she going to do about it?” 

“You wouldn’t kill your own child, would you?” A voice unlike her own mulled with equal parts accusation, suspicion, and remorse.

Piper was breathing slowly now — listening to Chloe drift off to sleep when she heard a bedlam erupt downstairs with a shatter and sound of glass breaking — "Perhaps a mug or a porcelain plate of some sort.” she debated.

Her heartbeat fluttered and heart sounds began to fill the room. Piper looked down to see if Chloe — woke or possibly began to rouse. Then with a fork sitting in her chest, she walked feet first out of the room. She turned the door behind her and levitated down the stairs — stopping only to grab a baseball bat from the closet on the way.

Piper walked past the living room and slid on the graveling of the carpet— stopping to peek her peach head into the empty kitchen. Moonlight bounced off the kitchen sink as it leaked in through the capillary windowsill. 

On the checkered kitchen tile floor, there sat shards of broken glass—presumably made from the remnants of insomnia curing Spanish wine, Piper had drunk sordidly beforehand.

She exhaled air from her lips and put the baseball bat aside, before kneeling down to sweep the shivering shard fragments of the shaven lens. When she turned to dispose of the glass — she felt a gust of wind sweep by her bare feet in a swift-moving flash. The room shifted—almost seeming lopsided or disproportionately asymmetrical in view and she spun around to catch a glimpse of what she speculated was a figure moving so quickly—at the speed of light or darkness, perhaps—that she could not make out limb from which limb, as it shifted into rearview.

Her eyes finally settled and she found a gloomy form of Blake in appearance. He was— truly Chloe’s brunet Satanic mirror image, standing there with soulless, rutilant brown eyes — watching her pedantically. His eyes undulated, tracing Piper — who stood, physically shaking with cataplexy and surprise.

A dull but alluring smirk painted his oval sfumato face and he eclipsed, turning to walk closer — almost as if walking on choppy water or as if, unnaturally in slow motion on the bottom of the ocean.

Piper grabbed the ends of her silken robe and pulled herself close — almost falling into the snakepit of the sink. She pressed her lips apart but was nearly unable to choke out the words to match her brain as it thought.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, bleating like a lamb mid-slaughter.

With a slight turn of the head and two lines forming in his forehead—

Blake uttered bleakly, “I reckon we’re both well past that now. Dontcha think?”