Daughter of the Cult of Flesh and Bone

Content warning: Themes and or references to cult practices and mutilation. Reader discretion is advised.

Around 20 years ago, I got free of my father and his cult. I still find that my curiosity drives me back here. It is unfathomable that I would be back here after all this time. It’s been 20 years; I wonder how the place has held up. “It’s probably in shambles,” I muttered to myself. As I walked up the driveway, I noticed some old vestiges of blood on the edges of the stone pathway. I remember my father dragging the bodies off the side of the path as he walked dead center on the path. I walk past the tall pine trees lining the path and enter the clearing. In the clearing, the path continues to lead to a light lavender two-story house with white accent features and drag marks through the grass towards the basement hatch that I remember being in the backyard. 

As I approached the porch, I felt eyes on me. It feels like a concentration of hostility and malice directed towards me. As I continue through the front door and into the foyer, I notice the old cultist robes hanging on the coat rack to the right of the door. I start to feel uneasy remembering the robbed men that would lurk in the house for what feels like all of the time. I was never truly alone. There was always some cultist following and watching me. I pass through the foyer and into the main hallway. I see the old, grotesque paintings lining the walls, depicting scenes of gore, bones, and bloodshed. I heard the floorboards creak behind me. I turn around to see nothing. So, I continue through the long hallway and come across an old wooden door with carvings of kids' toys in the lower section of the door. It was my younger brother's door. He always carved into the door when he was bored. As I reach to open the door, I feel that gaze on me again. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, so I stop and look around. “Is anyone there?” I called out. 

I open his door and peer inside. It's as dark as night, so I flip the light switch on the left side of the door. As the light floods the room, I see the pastel blue wallpaper with plane decals on it and the white baseboards. Which leads to the wooden floor with the playmat at the left side of the bed. The full-sized bed is still against the wall in the middle, with the head of the bed facing the door. The bed is made with his cobalt blue bedding. There are two huge windows centered behind the bed with deep blue curtains. This room hasn’t been inhabited since he went missing 29 years ago. He was only five years old when he disappeared. The toy chest in the front of the bed is barely closed, with the toys trying to escape their prison. I can see his old model trains and airplanes near the top so they could grab them quickly. They were his favorite toys after all. I remember him always making me play with him. In the right corner, the folding closet door is cracked open to reveal his old blue shirts of all different shades. And finally, the old wooden dresser next to the closet door which has three drawers. It has been so long since he was missing. I don’t know why I can’t remember anything on the day he went missing. I know I was home.

The house looks timeless. “It’s just as I remember it,” I say in confusion. I make my way to the back door and try to open it. I give it a good push before I realize I am going to have to put my whole body into it. I get in position with my shoulder to the door and start trying to force it open. “Why won’t this door…” I say to the offbeat of my weight hitting the door. I hear a creak as I start to put my weight into the door one last time. “Open,” I say as the door and I fell hard on the hard wooden porch. 

I got up from the ground and looked around at the back yard. As I glanced ahead of me, I saw the moon illuminate the old sacrificial altar that the cultists always used for their rituals. It was an old white granite table with a pedestal for the cult leader to do his surmans. Around the table was a white granite floor with a circle with cultist symbols carved into the ground. There was a small pit near the circle that the cultists would use to fill the carved circle and symbols. There are three steps made out of granite to the altar that acts as the border from the cultist practices and the rest of the backyard. The cultists would stand over the pit, and my mother would cut their arm with the sacrificial blade so that their blood would fill the circle. The sacrifice’s blood would then also be added to the circle after the sermon was complete. Next, with the preparations complete, the main ritual would commence. I can’t remember what exactly they would do, but I do remember that after they were done, the sacrifice's flesh and bones would disappear. I know that the cultists don’t eat them because I heard the newer cultists talking about finding the organs near the altar.

 As I walk past the sacrificial altar, I see the large dark green shed. I remember this shed being used to store the supplies that the cultists used in the ritual. I walk towards the shed, but after my third step, I hear a low growling coming from behind. So I cautiously walk past the front side of the shed and venture to investigate the side of the shed. When I approach the back side, I slow my breathing and cautiously peer past the back corner of the shed. I see the creature’s eyes glaring back at me. “Crap!” I say as I start to run as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

I run past the shed, through the blood circle, and past the altar before I check behind me. I see it racing towards me. Its bones and flesh rip grotesquely as it runs. I continue to run faster past the side of the house to about the porch, then I turn to run into the forest. I run through the trees for a while until I duck behind one of the pine trees and look out for it, gasping for air as quietly as I possibly can. It looked like a massive creature with mixes of canine, feline, and humanoid in its main figure. It appeared to be made out of different pieces of raw flesh and intruding bone. No skin or organs can be found on its form. “Wait, that creature looks familiar,” I thought to myself as my surroundings seemed to darken.

As the blackness swarms all around me. In an instant, as the darkness engulfed me, the evocation released. I remember. I remember my brother’s death. Through the window of my childhood room. In the dead of night, I remember seeing my father put my brother in the middle of that stone in the circle. I remember the followers cut their wrists in ceremony to create the circle. I remember watching in terror as my brother, Sacrim, was being offered to that creature of flesh and bone. And that’s all I saw. Flesh and bone as that creature ripped him apart, limb by bloody limb. The blood clung to every surface it could, crying out for a savior that could not reach it. Because that creature, that demon would not let it. I watched as that creature added my brother to itself. Leaving his skin, heart, brain, intestines, and other organs strewn across the altar and blood circle.

The moment after the darkness is released, my attention is taken in an instant to the snarling beast before me. It gathers itself and stretches in an intimidated way, screeching further towards me, and stretches. It was a loud, beastly, demonic screech that led into a low growl. It leapt from its station towards me and pinned me down with its huge bony, fleshy limbs. It looked at me in sorrow for a split second, and then it was back to its hostile nature. As though it recognized me. Or as some part of it recognized me. But that part was pushed back by the brimming hostile intentions and thoughts.

It was Sacrim. He was trying to fight it, but it was only able to succeed for a moment before he was pushed back. He was part of a collection of personalities and consciences that overwhelm each other so they can not fight the dark instincts of the creature. Always looking for more additions to itself. As I am pinned to the ground, it growls a low, deep, broken demonic growl. 

Then I scream as it starts to rip me apart. It tore my legs off so I wouldn’t be able to run. I heard the sound of my tendons ripping slowly. Next, I felt the joints of my legs dislocate with the force of being pulled out of my hip socket. I felt every moment of my flesh being ripped at my hips and throbbing pain as the blood rushed out of the newly open wounds. It then went into my arms with the same gruesome process. Then it ripped my head off. I don’t know why, but I still see what it’s doing to my body. I feel completely numb to everything now. It then proceeded to carefully cut open my stomach and remove all of my internal organs and lay them to the side. It then removed my eyes from my eye sockets and ripped open my skull to remove my brain. Then it added both to that pile. 

When it was done with that, it started to cautiously peel my skin off each piece of my separated body before moving to the next one. It was careful to cut the tendons holding on the skin with its bony claw to make it easier to peel my skin off. It added my skin to the pile of organs. Next, it separated my flesh from my bones. Peeling away the muscles and the flesh appeared to be easy for it with the sharp claws. It took its bony claws and scraped away my flesh and added it to its pile. And tossed the bones into its pile. When that gruesome process was complete, it stuck the flesh and bones onto different places on its form. It looked at where I was looking from and consumed me through its fleshy jaws and sharp, irregular teeth. When it did this, I felt them. “I feel the others it has consumed over the years; I even feel him.” I think to myself as I sink into the black void filled with malice and hostile intentions.

THE END.