Dermon-tologist

Dermon-tologist

Dermon stabbed the syringe into the side of his neck. A cold, indifferent metal gave way to glorious relief as the purple fluid pierced his gaping, veiny flesh. His muscles tensed, budging beneath the renewed bones of his newly evolving body. The gentle swirl of the glass vial as it emptied into his system was like a sweet lullaby to his newly clearing ears. The distant yawn of traffic became just as natural as the clacking of his untamed fingernails against the temples of his head. The idle chatter of the public outside was as agonising as the scrape of nails against a chalkboard. Endlessly bickering in their fruitless facades and conflicts. It all seemed so… below him now. A simple learning exercise.

“Yes, below.” The turgid voice in his mind chattered. A voice so gravelly it was as though he could feel the forked tongue lavishing around his throat. The warm, sticky embrace of breath against his nape, making his skin prickle in astonishment. All those insipid thoughts before – giving way to only one.

“US.”

Dermon’s eyes dilated to the size of a marble, engulfing his entire vision. It was as though a black hole had consumed all his senses, and in his thirst for discovery, he eagerly awaited each atom of his fragile body to be ripped apart into many. If no substitutes can be found, a good self-trial shall suffice. After all, who do we wish to suffer more in this meaningless void than ourselves?

His pupil swirled around his eye, bashing against the edges and tips. Forming into many. So many little holes into his soul. Teeming with insects that feasted on the pure white tissue that was left behind.

He could faintly feel his dry lips coil outward, wrapping around his mouth as though his head was being pulled from the inside. His tongue slivered around his open mouth like a snake, writhing for the fleshy relief of the walls that surrounded it. The tip of his tongue snared towards the roof of his mouth. He could feel these tiny creatures reach out of its flesh, tombing into his head above. He wished to scream, but his body didn’t pay heed. He felt like an onlooker to a horrific car crash. Unable to do anything as the fire consumed every living thing around it.

Hundreds of years of vivid memories and connections. Lost in a few milliseconds. A tragedy he was all too familiar with as part of his expendable profession. Humanity was far too acquainted with its own inevitable demise. It fuels everybody. And those that sneer at its mention? They’re far too weak to dance with their demons.

In an instant, all resistance fell flat. He swallowed the bile in his throat, tasting the bitter ail of poison entering his system. Yet it felt just as natural as the blood that pushed his body. He no longer wished to resist. Only be welcomed in the powers he helped conceive.

His mouth snarled into an unhinged smile, the colour from his lips dripping down his chin.

“Now you can be better… now, you can be so much more.” The sinister voice dropped to a tender, soothing tone. That of a seductive woman. It echoed throughout his pulsing mind, returning even stronger each time. The words were like a promise to him. A promise that could only sound even sweeter with each passing dance in his aching head. Until it burrowed into his cheeks, letting out from his mouth.

“I never needed them.”

“But they do need me.”

“More than ever.”

Dermon’s mind filled with those age-old questions. Those same cowardly voices that belched out as though they still had any control over his being. That always held him back from his true potential. He pitied them, but in their numbers, they forced him into submission. He couldn’t resist the overwhelming screams. Reason was beyond them. Much like the rest of his own species. Content with their recyclable lives. Living for a pitiful income. Just to make their gluttonous overlords that much fatter. And what was their reward?

A whisper at the back of some infernal clinic, with a smug stretch of their eyebrows. A playground story meant strictly for entertainment.

But he had finally found his reason. And when he has his way, his story would be legend.

He raised his hand, trembling as the veins pulsed through his skin. Replaced with a gangly purple elixir. He cupped his palm against his cheeks, tugging them viciously. With one yank, he ripped the skin clean off, revealing a void where muscle should have reached out. Instead, an onslaught of tendrils formed into tiny, grubby hands. Filling the vacant hole. One of them reached outward, sweeping over his cheek as though a rekindled love once thought lost to time itself.

“You’re safe now.”

“You’re understood.”

“You don’t need them.”

“They will feel the poison they fed you.”

“Because they couldn’t handle your beauty.”

“But I see you for who you really are.”

“…A part of me…”

The hallway outside was cleanly swathed, so spotless it was though the space itself was captured in time through the reflection. A lone nurse in a plain uniform attended to her clipboard as she absentmindedly walked down the corridor, taking note of the various doors and numbers that passed her peripheral vision. She glanced towards the last door on the left, donning the number 43 beside the grimy door. It was the only sign of muck in this otherwise immaculate building. With a look of exasperation, she knocked on the door repeatedly.

“Dermon? Dermon, have you been ditching on safety protocols again?”

She pushed her head against the glass of the door, scrunching her eyes for a better look. The light fixture in the room was swinging wildly, yet there was no sign of life or disturbance as the furniture was expertly placed within the lines on the floor. For the first time in forever, the walls shone brightly, exposing the marble walls behind. She appeared satisfied, jotting the display down in her clipboard. In a swift blink however, the furniture was thrown askew. The finely decorated walls give way to moulding, abhorrent patches of grime and dirt. As though an entire jungle had found itself wedged into the very heart of their city.

The door itself began to knock, sending the nurse backwards in fear. A shadow stood just before it, its head looking towards the floor.

“Dermon? Have you been sleeping at work again? I thought we got you help for that?”

The shadow stood there. Unphased. Lingering. The grime sauntering behind slowly fermented into vines that pulsed beneath the smooth marble floors and walls, covering the entire room. Their mass shifted underneath the ground, forming little contours that drifted around the room. Messing with the furniture even more. The nurse was in utter disbelief, cradling her mouth as the clipboard fell towards the ground. A purple, slimy hand struck out, pulling the clipboard backwards. Almost snapping in half as it snared against the lip of the door, but it seemed to morph into some oily substance. Bending just enough to narrowly fit through.

The light bounced around the room as the shadow banged its head virulently against the glass. Each passing glance of the spotlight exposed more and more deterioration in the office. The furniture was spread out in a way that almost seemed like Morse Code.

The shadow had slammed its head one final time against the glass, slumping against the door with a muted thud. A massive gaping crack was formed in the window, a geyser of blood swirled around. It slowly began to circle the crack, mingling with the gooey organism that spread through the room. A bloody handprint was all that remained. Everything else was efficiently consumed.

At last, the clipboard was pushed against the door.

“Let’s be beautiful together.”

Droplets of red liquid pooled from the roof as the nurse looked upwards, horror stricken across her paralyzed gaze.

“Hello, nurse.”

Dermon’s pale face stared back. He smiled, exposing the glassy mess that was his newfound fangs. Her face reflected within its confines. The vile specimen corroded around his face, a shadow that snared all but his most important facial features. He barely resembled anything human anymore, just a guinea pig in a bush of dying thorns. She focused intently on his gaze, too scared to bring herself to acknowledge anything else, but he looked straight through her. As if she was just a simple ant waiting to be crushed on the street. As if that was her only fate. And she was hiding all along.

She would no longer.

“Don’t be afraid. You don't have the time to.”

Her body was gripped into the vents above, screaming helplessly. From behind the nearby wall, a janitor was safely huddled in his office. The walls and roof shook violently as more screams sundered throughout the facility. All as he innocently nodded along to the tunes through his headphones.

The security cameras turned on abruptly, showing the entire hospital had been consumed by the organism. Doctors and nurses were being pulled along through the vents and floors, racing through the various levels of the multi-structure. Grinding noises could be heard as they were tussled inside lockers and thrown into the various hospital equipment. Including one that scraped their hands against the sides of the Iron Lung machine, their hands reduced to meaty bones. A mass of blood and guts decorating the machine like the murals of a church.

In the basement, a nurse clutched to the sodden ground with their fingernails, turning bloody as their body was used to repair the twisted mechanisms of the sewer system. Their body being crushed to a cube.

The security system blared red, recording the various intrusions through the floor plans as the cameras followed along. All of it reported back to the epicentre of it all – throbbing, purple veins that lurched to the walls of the facility, with a black beating heart that stood where Dermon’s office was.

A slimy mass of tendrils spread through the floor of the building, leering along like spiders to a poisoned fly. Rippling with each jolt of electricity in the generator, or each fumble in the plumbing system as bodies and limbs were transported along. Heads pooled out of the mass, looking towards the cameras solemnly. They gasped for air, being softly swept under by one of the various emerging tentacles. The view changed to an impossible angle of the janitor’s room; his head being swiftly twisted around. A peeled scalp of head covering his bald head.

His muscles spasmed out like cogs stripped from a malfunctioning clock. The popping sounds of trapped air, and cracking bones faded into the bubbling mass that swept the room. Tentacles spilled out of his back, searing through his exposed veins and skeleton. Contorting his body to cover the entire space. The creature played with him as if he was a piece of chewing gum wrapped under a passing boot.

The time signature on the camera pushed forward. All the machinery and furniture were pulled together in a giant explosion, congealing to where the security system was. The walls ripped apart to resemble the image of a brain.

A bloody mess of entrails was left across the floor, spelling out:

“We’re together again.”

“It’s always been inside us.”

“Inside me.”

“– Dermon”

A billboard ruptured through the roof:

“Be as beautiful as you feel within.”

You can be our next miracle!

All it takes is an arm and a leg!

Buy one… get one…