I'm rotting inside
My flesh turns to dust

It waited, idle.

A deep breath in, a shuddering breath out.

It can taste her on the air, a familiarity despite the years – decades? – that have passed. There is no feasible way that it can forget her, forget the warmth of her skin or the scent that clutched the edges of his nostrils each morning. They spent years together, forging an empire, creating children that would be their legacy. It could never forget her, not even when Hell finally spits her back out.

They flock to her like brainless chickens, gaping at her and grasping at what they can. She is so new to them and yet ancient, a name that has since been forgotten on their tongues. Even her son, the maggot that he is, rises from the shadows to kiss the feet of his beloved mother. From afar, it scoffs at them all. They do not know her like it does; they have not slept in her bed, pressed to her curves. They know nothing of the arrogance and ambition that circulates through her.

But they will.

Much like a lion stalking its prey, Infection waits. It stands at the edge of the shadows, kneading the soil with its talons until she strays near enough.

One step, then two. It has been alive, but dormant, and so its movement is jagged, almost robotic until it abruptly stops. ”Starlace,” her name peels off its tongue just as sickeningly as when they ruled together, but there is a subtle hint of tenderness underlying the scraping of its voice. ”I knew you were unable to stay away forever,” a jackal smile stretches across its cracked lips, its green eyes glimmering mischievously in the dappled, winter sunlight. It comes to her in one piece, its body entirely whole and pristine after a recent play of death and rebirth. Its skin is not marred, it is not sloughing off or rotten.

For Starlace’s homecoming, it returns to her entirely whole, except for the crude, decaying heart suspended in an otherwise empty chest. 

infection

I'm rotting inside
My flesh turns to dust

It regards her quietly, observantly. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has. Starlace is here, their gazes laced together. It remembers her dying, how the twins destroyed them. Her body was limp on the beach even as the scarlet-red waves lapped at her. Not much time lapsed until the flies swarmed her.

It watched her then as memories flashed across closed eyelids. The twins thought them both dead, murdered by an obnoxious beam of light and power; but it takes more than that to kill Infection.

A jagged grin stretches across its cracked lips as a gleam of amusement reaches the putrid green of its eyes. ”You know well those twins were ours,” it edges closer, reaching for her skin and tracing its mouth down the length of her spine, tasting her again after all these years. ”Somehow I survived but you didn’t,” its voice rasps from neglect, the words crawling like spiders from the depths of its throat, ”Survival of the fittest, I presume.” But it knows that she already has a rebuttal to protest the statement; it would be unlike her to accept any insult, no matter how heavily coated in humor it is. ”Speaking of which, our lines together still continue and still thrive,” a primal growl rises and vibrates through its hollow core as it unwillingly peels from the cold of her skin. Different, and yet the same.

Drawing in her scent, it remembers their evenings together. How many children did they bring into this untamed world? It remembers their empire, their surge of power over the Chamber and Tundra. Together, they were a relentless pair, and although love did not exist in its heart or in the fucks, there was still a magnetic field that hindered much stray.

Since her demise, it has become reclusive and silent.

”A while,” it confesses bitterly because she knows what it yearned for – kings, queens, hands of power – but now it consumes lowly deer in the shrouded darkness. ”This world has greatly changed.” While once, it was a tertiary predator, a murderer, a fearsome creature, the allure of its abilities has stagnated with the uprising of more formidable powers. There are more unique means of killing, ones that surpass its own capabilities. Rolling its shoulders, it turns its head to look at her and to search the eyes of its only Queen. ”Why now?” The question is simple, but curious. It has been half a century, if not longer. For what purpose, it wonders does she return to Beqanna now.

infection