Mori

Short neo-gothic horror story

I woke to his hands at the base of my neck. Those wide, hard thumbs lined and gnarled and festering with time, brusque with the abrasion of decades long sunk before I breathed. I repulse you, his touch seemed to say in the dark. I repulse you, and that is your punishment. I am the molten gold poured into the mouth of your greed.

“Are you going to write this down too, I wonder, ” he had mused in the gloom, tracing up to my throat. “Are you going to trap me on paper, for history to laugh at?” I did not respond. Six months to the night as his wife, and I knew not to let him savour any inch of emotion, or relish in a second of my disgust. But more than anything, in the cold bloom of the night, I did not want to turn and see that rotting face curdled with age in the dark. I had buried myself with him, this wedded corpse that lingered in my bed and rotted and blistered beside me each night. “You always knew how to find what hurt, didn’t you my dear?” Those hands again, hard on my hips, my nakedness. “You’re more like me than you’d like. You’re cold, too.”

“I’m not,” I retorted, more to myself than to him. “I’m nothing like you. I’ve never been anything like you.” I’m alive, I wanted to add. I’m alive, I beat, I breathe, I love, I feel. I am still full of what has yet to be. Not like you. Nothing like you. Nothing as cruel or hard or…