Removed

“Into the abyss.”

Yaram held up her carafe and rolled her head back, sucking in a breath. With a single motion of her wrist, she tipped it to her dry, peeling lips and swallowed down the thick liquid at once. The familiar burn greeted her throat and eyes, bringing bittersweet relief almost immediately.

“Fall upon your sword and you will sleep with the heroes.”

She spoke the words with her own, burning tongue, but they seemed to leave her mouth in the voice of her father.

“There is no greater honor than that of dying for your master.”

A wicked, rasping laugh followed, this time neither her father’s nor her own, but that of something much more sinister. Something that Yaram often felt squirming and seething inside of her, clawing desperately to get out. So long she had fought this internal worm, this restless entity, but her patience and her strength may have finally been spent.

The burning liquid slithered down her gullet, dropping warmly into her stomach and calming the incessant wriggling of that dark entity. Yes, she could fight it just a little bit longer...

“Sleep, now,” she said, rubbing her stomach in the motherly way she had only ever fantasized about. Her own mother’s hands hadn’t been for rubbing tender tummies, but for slapping, pinching, and even punching, when the mood was right for it.

Yaram stared down at her hands, knobby, scarred, and callused—hands that looked like her mother’s. If she’d had a child of her own, would she have used those hands to calm and caress, or to beat the sense from their skulls? Yaram never felt she was meant to be a mother—and, thankfully, had apparently never been fertile enough to foster one from her own frigid loins—but she liked to think she would have never taken out her anger on those weaker than herself. Then again, she’d gotten a lot of her scars and calluses in lip-splitting, gut-busting brawls, often after long bouts of drinking, in the alleyways and gutters between the taverns and her hovel of a flat. And, though she didn’t want to admit it, she knew very well that a drunken fight was only ever spurned on by anger erupting from within oneself, and she was too attuned to her instincts of self-preservation to have ever picked a brawling partner stronger than she could handle. No, it was the weak that were meant to relieve the hate of the stronger. And then the weaker still to relieve their hate.

A roiling kick churned inside her gut once again. She’d had about enough of all this thinking and remembering—her noxious tonic was supposed to cancel all that out. And now the entity was awakening, too. Looking down into the empty carafe, she frowned.

“Need more.”

Yaram cleared her throat, spit onto the floor, and pulled herself grudgingly up from the stool. Dragging her well-worn boots across the wooden floorboards, she returned to the cupboard and pulled out a sinister collection of little bottles and pots. The long, grueling hours she had worked, scrubbing at old glass jugs, scooping up refuse in the streets, and countless other unspeakable tasks she could perform and receive payment for, in order to scrounge together enough to buy this little assortment of ingredients—she often wondered if it was worth it, but every time she swallowed down the finished product, all thoughts of worth and reason quickly left her head. Her fingers worked on the ingredients surprisingly quickly. A sprinkle of this, a dash of that, and a few drops of the other stuff. The witch’s brew bubbled and hissed. Yaram hissed back with a yellowed smile. She’d been sure to make this one strong.

This time, she didn’t even bother sitting down. Let the floorboards rise up to meet her, if they must. At least then she would know it was working.

Once more, she gulped down the evil concoction, letting out a satisfied sigh. The room tilted, and she gripped the wooden countertop as a second wave of sweet poison entered her blood stream.

“Into the a—“

Yaram gagged on her words. The entity inside her was far from quelled. It lurched, fighting its way upwards and sending her reeling.

“No—!” She panted, clamping a hand over her mouth and stumbling to the nearby basin, filled with dirty water that hadn’t been thrown out in much too long. If she was going to be sick, she at least wanted to do it someplace she wouldn’t have to mop up afterwards.

But she tried her best to choke it down. Why waste two perfectly good shots of liquid-relief? The nausea was only temporary, she knew this, and if she could hold it in just a little longer, she would be well on her way to blissful nothingness in no time.

Hand still clamped over a grimacing mouth, she stared into the murky water at her bleary-eyed reflection. Those eyes looking back at her didn’t seem to be her own; they seemed foggy and half-blind, as if they were staring past herself, still deeper into the muck and through a window to someplace far away. Somewhere removed.

Deep breaths through flared nostrils, in, out, in, out—and the entity seemed to settle, sliding slowly back down into its pit. And now, the poison began to really take a hold.

“There’s no greater glory than that of throwing yourself into the abyss.”

And as she fell back upon her stool and slumped over the table, relinquishing herself to dreamless black, the entity awoke once again to exact its cruel jest.

Ripping, tearing, crawling, it climbed up her throat, pushing the contents of her stomach up with it. First, acidic liquid spewed from her lips, and then a hand thrust its way out, long fingers prying open her teeth, followed by a gangling, twisting arm. She tried to scream, but next came a head, gasping and spluttering. Another arm, reaching out to grab the table’s edge, pulling the torso along with it. Finally, a slimy, wriggling pair of legs, and the feet were sliding across her tongue. With one final, spewing heave and a choking cough, the entity was out of her, stretching and contorting atop the table.

Yaram pushed herself backwards, falling from the stool to the floor. A terrible howling noise filled the room, and she realized astonishingly that it was coming from herself. Sobs shook her weakened frame, and she clutched at her head, yanking her hair in large clumps. She vomited once more, too wretched and pathetic to do anything but let the foul substance drip down the front of herself. Over the sound of her own whimpering, she could hear the haggard, gurgling breaths of the entity, still convulsing on the table.

And then there was silence.

Yaram held her breath. The table creaked. She didn’t dare look up.

“Good evening, my friend.”

The voice that filled the room turned her skin to withered paper, her bones to brittle sticks. She nearly bit through her own tongue and fainted.

“At last, we meet.”

With all the courage she had left, Yaram lifted her gaze to peer upon the entity. Through dizzying terror, she saw before her a creature so vile, so heinous, that it could have only been born of the darkest rancor within herself.

“But, then again, we already know each other quite well, don’t we?”

“I don’t know who you are, or what you are!” She whimpered and shivered on the floor, snot and vomit dripping down her chin.

“Of course you do.” Long fingers curled around the edge of the table, and an unholy face leaned over to peer down at her with hollow eyes, black lips wearing a sickening smile. “You created me. And I created you.”

“What do you want!” Yaram screeched hoarsely.

A slithering tongue flicked out, lapping up the sticky bile that still covered the entity. Once again, a wicked laugh filled the air.

“It is not what I want, Yaram, but what you want.”

The evil voice twisted and distorted, sounding eerily similar to her mother’s. If she hadn’t already evacuated the contents of her stomach, Yaram would have been sick all over again.

“Do you want to go on, Yaram? Do you want to continue this way? Or, do you want me to help you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you not call me here, Yaram? Did you not summon me in order to assist you with your task?”

Yaram’s head was pounding, sharp, incessant pain shooting down her spine and squeezing at her eyes.

“What task? What do you mean?”

The black, smiling lips curled ever more sinisterly. The hollow eyes blinked, and when they opened again they were the stormy, bloodshot eyes of her father.

“Death, Yaram. Death is what you seek, is it not? Pitiless, miserable death. That is why you have called me forth. I am your end, Yaram. I am your undoing.”

“No!”

She tried to back away, slipping and sliding across the floor in a puddle of her own sick, scurrying like frightened vermin. This isn’t what she wanted, it couldn’t be. Not like this...

“Have you forgotten, Yaram? There is no greater honor than dying for your master.”

“No, no, no, no, no...” she tried to cover her ears, but that voice, a voice that now sounded like her father’s, echoed inside her head.

“But who is your master, Yaram?” The entity slunk down from the table, slithering unnaturally across the floor towards her. “Who do you bow your head to?”

“No one! No one!”

“Is it not the men that pay you to scrape stinking scum from the sewers? Or, rather, is it the ones that pay you to let them crawl carnally on top of you in the crepuscular corners of the night? Or... could it be your mother?”

Wild, curling hair sprang from its head, flying in greasy strands all about its face—the hair of her mother.

“Or, your father?”

The stormy eyes laughed at her, bloodshot, red, and filled with resentment.

“NO!” She screeched, her voice breaking. “No one! I have no master!”

“Ah, then it is yourself, Yaram. You are your own master.”

She stopped her shivering and wailing for a moment to consider this.

“Yes, Yaram. And who better to die for, than yourself?”

She found herself shaking her head, but couldn’t speak.

“Let me help you, Yaram. Let me help you claim your greatest honor.”

It was over her now, looking down and smiling with those black lips all the while. She wasn’t ready to die. There was no honor in such a death.

Its top lip curled back in a delighted snarl, sharp teeth dripping with saliva. It would eat her alive. Swallow her until there was nothing left. Fresh tears filled her eyes.

No... no, she wouldn’t give in like this. She was her own master, after all.

Blindly, she reached out and grabbed for the overturned stool, using all of her momentum to fling it at the entity. It splintered apart on impact, doing little except stalling it for a moment. It let out a seething cackle, long tongue wagging through the air.

“What do you want, Yaram?” It taunted.

She stumbled to her feet, rushing towards the wooden countertop and grasping the handle of a rusty cleaver. The entity was behind her. Good.

“What do you want—“

She spun around, cleaving it right between the eyes. Eyes stolen from her father.

“I want to live.”

Dark blood oozed down its smiling face, it’s head split clear in two, soaking into the wild hair. Hair stolen from her mother. It let out a small, gurgling laugh and then seemed to melt before her eyes, reduced to nothing more than a foul puddle. And then the room around her lifted away, and she finally fell into blackness.

***

Some time passed, Yaram couldn’t be sure how much, but when she awoke again, she was still lying on the floor in front of the wooden counter. In her hand, she gripped a rusty cleaver, and all around her there was chaos. A broken stool, scattered cutlery, and patches of half-dried vomit. A horrendous mess.

But she was still alive.

She started cleaning up, half-wondering if it had all been a nightmarish dream, half-trying to forget that any of it happened. Collecting her assortment of pots and bottles in her arms and stuffing them in an old sack, she walked all the way to the edge of town in the midday heat and dumped them amidst the rubbish pile. She wouldn’t need them anymore. She was her own master. She’d decided: she wanted to live.