Chapter 114: Kiss of death
All this was going on and all his organ could think of was bulge in erection. What was so exciting about being straddled by a creature pulled straight out of a horror scene?
Surely, stranger things would come knocking looking for one of their monsters. But even then, his member chose the wrong time to be hard, as if life wasn't already.
Even as his body yet bucked and strained against the vise of her otherworldly presence pinning him, Carlos instinctively understood his struggles unfolded in vain. With abject finality, he surrendered himself over to the impending annihilation of his scarce identity...
When the demonic being's pallid features finally descended toward his, all pretense of seduction or mockery bled away into sheer bestial hunger. He could see it in her eyes, he was prey and she was predator. He was breakfast and unceremoniously served in bed.
"It's nothing personal. You just happened to fall in my radar and the chaos that surrounds us all. Take this as comfort, I will - " she took a long breath, gliding her tongue across Carlos's cheek before she continued "-enjoy doing this to you," the woman whispered sweetly to Carlos.
In the span of that single eternal inhalation as her glacial lips brushed against his own...Carlos experienced reality itself unraveling into a dizzying kaleidoscope of fractured brilliance.
An instantaneous lifetime's distillation of memories, experiences, even the fundamental sensations of selfhood seemed to unspool from his psyche, only to be greedily devoured by the rapacious entity forcing its way inside him.
The kiss of death. So heavenly yet spawned from the deepest parts of hell.
Where terror and revulsion had first consumed his every faculty, in those final infinite moments stretched across oblivion's membrane...there lingered only blissful serenity amidst the void. As if an unbearable weight had finally been lifted, leaving his extinguished consciousness to transcend from its corporeal shackles into untrammeled liberation.
And throughout that entire metaphysical unraveling, ever-calm and resolute... Carmenz his girlfriend slumbered beside her uninvited guest's quivering vessel, serenaded only by the rasping whispers of spectral winds caressing the curtains from some forgotten realm.
When the grim deed was finally concluded, the dark seductress arose once more, every sleek and savage angle of her raptorial form refracting in the dim bedroom ambience like a scotomized fever dream. With a contented sigh, she extended one elegant hand to materialize an antique silver compact from the void ether.
Unveiling its polished lid with an indolent flick of her thumb, she drank in her visage's reflection, basking in the renewed vitality coursing through her veins.
Though mere hours before, fatigue and ennui had visibly dimmed her porcelain mask of ageless beauty toward the wan and haunted...now her emerald gaze shimmered with sated intensity, every cruel curve and hollowed edge radiating renewed purpose.
"That's a good chassis," she purred, crimson lips curving into a revenant's smile while tracing one taloned fingertip along her jaw in idle appreciation. "You have served your paltry function admirably...and are to be commended for averting any potential obstacles before they can fester."
Snapping the compact lid closed with the same casual finality, she turned to deliver one final derisive glance at the catatonic husk that had once been Carlos Eduardo Jimenez.
For there he lay, eyes staring into a blanketed middle distance as the final vestiges of memories seeped from his soul. Memories of vocation, relationships, the ability to even differentiate his own hands from foreign objects...all of it utterly stripped away, leaving only a base animalistic drive to breathe and metabolize salt.
A living, breathing void existed where any notion of Carlos's former humanity had once endured – a cruel mockery of existence worse than the starkest dementia or vegetative state.
The remorseless being sneered in dark amusement at this empty receptacle, savoring one final mote of bitter irony. That these temporal familiars tasked with rectifying Blake Shelton's predicament should find all hope for justice rending apart at the seams in such unceremonious fashion.
All thanks to her effortless intervention and ability to unmake the tentative chains of circumstance they had so fervently assembled...
With a final contemptuous toss of her ebon tresses, the statuesque horror turned and swirled her cloak around her formidable, disappearing back into the shadows from whence she emerged. As the tenebrous cloud of eldritch vapors dissipated fully, the perfume of lightning and burnt ozone hung in the cloistered bedroom's air like a viscous purgative.
The terrible silence that held dominion once more was very nearly...palpable in its profane completeness.
***
When Paul Reyes and his fellow investigators inevitably stormed Carlos Jimenez's residence the very next day, ready to extract any means required to securing his critical eyewitness verification, they found only a drooling, unresponsive flesh carcass occupying what had once been that man's mortal vessel.
His face bore a hauntingly serene expression, marred only by the unsettling grin that stretched unnaturally across his lips, as though his face were on the verge of tearing open.Their hearts sank as they realized that Carlos was no longer the coherent witness they had hoped to interrogate.
Instead, he appeared to be trapped in some kind of vegetative state, his body present but his mind lost to an unknown abyss.
As Paul Reyes and his team rushed to Carlos Jimenez's aid, their initial plans for interrogation swiftly gave way to urgent calls for medical assistance. Carlos's girlfriend looked at them with a mix of confusion and distress. She was utterly distraught and could scarcely comprehend the abrupt change that had befallen her partner.
The man who had slept beside her just the night before now lay slumped in a state of eerie unconsciousness, his once lively demeanor extinguished as if a switch had been flipped, leaving only a shell of his former self.
Amidst the chaos, Paul and his colleagues swiftly dialed emergency services, their hearts heavy with concern for Carlos's well-being. As the ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, they could only hope that Carlos would receive the help he so desperately needed, and that perhaps, amidst the uncertainty, some semblance of clarity and resolution would emerge from the darkness that now enveloped him.
It was a devastating blow to their efforts, leaving them with more questions than answers as they struggled to comprehend the extent of whatever dark forces had wrought this horrifying transformation upon him.
Whatever crucial testimony their captive could have provided for exonerating Blake Shelton's predicament had been irrevocably, maliciously...unmade.
And while the seasoned team of professional investigators instantly realized the despair of their now-futile efforts, they could scarcely begin grappling with _how_ such a cruel violation had manifested in the first place.
Sadly, their intrinsic worldview was hardly equipped to conceive of the cackling disdain for their prosecutorial crusade still coiling through the unseen spaces around them...
As this latest atrocity merely stoked the righteous hunger for vengeance against those seen and unseen orchestrating Blake's increasingly dire calamities.
The trio were left frustrated. What fate now awaits Blake...?
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