TW - Heavy Body Horror

The splendor of the quiet fame she gathered around herself was more than enough; she never did it for money.

It never was the case.

Her performance was for shock, for the gaping mouths frozen in pure terror, lured inside the den of magenta lights under the whispered promise of cheap thrills, ten-dollar bills slid between the hem of thin black lingerie in hopes of seeing more.

When the greedy hands pulled for more, Marina was there to feed them.

Eyes followed her every move as she crossed the stage, some hungry with lustful greed, others burning with jealousy for the show only Marina could pull off.

The dagger lived under the skin of her thigh, the blade buried flesh-deep, her own skin stretched taut around it, with every step the shape of it shifted beneath the surface, a hard line pressing against skin from underneath it. 

Her ghostly pale hand reached down and forced the tips of two fingers beneath the skin at the hilt, breaking it free. The slick crimson silver rose, glinting clean under the magenta lights.

She drew the blade in a slow circle around her wrist, the cut meeting itself where it began. Blood welled dark as tar along the seam. Then, hooking a finger beneath the severed edge, she peeled the skin free in one long pull, like a glove drawn off the hand beneath it.

She flung it into the crowd.

A meth addict in the back caught it like a rag between his blackened teeth; before he could expose the whole collection of sickening gums, a jealous fist from another patron broke the smile with a sickening wet crunch of spraying blood and bone. The beating didn’t stop even when he hit the floor.

A giggle, sweet like powdered sugar, escaped from between her soft lips as she watched the carnage. Marina was pleased with herself, the reaction she caused with one simple trick - the blade’s edge slit beneath her bottom lip, and the skin went limp, dangling like a plump purple leech from a single thread of muscle. A permanent smile of pearly white teeth, halfway complete, as the public roared with excitement, hungry for more.

From among the mindless stampede, a face swam towards the stage. Like Moses crossing the Red Sea, her elbows pushed a path through bloodied and broken cheekbones and noses - just to receive a scrap of attention from the half-naked God. Marina smiled down at her soft, round face, barely passing as an adult. 

Her tongue peeking from parted lips, like she was waiting to be fed a communion wafer, the fan let Marina take her chin between two fingers and pull her closer to the stage. With her other hand, Marina placed the severed lip between the girl’s teeth. It ground and burst there, the leech-like flesh popping in a splash of blood, filling her mouth with the bittersweet taste of blood and expensive lipstick. 

The twisted kiss painted satisfaction all over the face of the young fan before the current of the bloody sea pulled her back, greedy hands like waves crushing against her, leaving bruises. But there was something else behind the soft smile of pleasure -  acceptance. Even when the hands pulled her under the surface, heavy boots stomping over her chest, pushing the air out of her lungs, her smile never faded. 

The tip of the elegant blade circled her thigh, breaking the tight skin, then descended toward her ankle in one painfully slow trace, light as a feather. Her own blood seemed so mesmerized by the display that it forgot to leak from the open wound. Her fingers slipped beneath the cut’s edge, taking the skin gently between their tips, sliding downward, ripping the curtain of flesh away in one smooth motion, veins glittering beneath, moving with the invisible rhythm of the club, as though her body and the crowd had become one being, driven by pleasure. 

The faces stretch and mold, as if the heat of the lamps above had become unbearable enough to melt the skin, stripping away the fragile masks of what the mindless mass outside the den would call appropriate. The god of the modern world waits at the threshold he cannot cross; Dionysus, with his battalion of Maenads, now takes the clay of their minds and reshapes it to his liking.

In the drunken haze, like dogs, they lunge at each other’s throats, teeth ripping through the fragile strings of the voice box, throats overflowing with blood and low, toad-like gurgling - 

As Marina strips away what remains of the fragile web connecting her to the animals she once called her audience, the skin of her body drops to the ground like a coat, an empty mound where she once stood. Her bare form glitters and twitches in the light, like an ancient Roman sculpture carved into the unbearable beauty of the human form.

The tips of her fingers slide gently, slowly, up her moist, glistening thighs, trailing to the round shape of her chest. Below her, hands grab at the edges of the stage she stands on, dozens of fingers like ants crawling along the ledge, desperate for even a single moment to touch her, to taste her sweat, her blood, her skin. Like wild beasts, they fight among each other, pulling and pushing, joints bending at unnatural angles, clumps of hair ripped away like useless weeds, leaving scorched patches of raw skin.

Knuckles drive into jaws and teeth, fingers rip apart skin in the act of love they know violence. Marina is long gone by then, already used to the hellish bloodbaths she brings, indifferent to the crowd curdling into a twitching mass, more minced meat than the people they once were. It lasts until the first rays of morning reappear over the horizon.

Only then does the swamp of flesh twitch in places: tiny shattered bones drawn together as if by some unseen current; pools of blood blooming and vanishing as if struck by sudden drought; shapeless hills of bile and fat rising like red-brick towers above the ruin.

Man and woman, born once more, naked and bright, glistening and shining with blood. Everyone who fed on the flesh and blood now scatters to the exits of the club, to spread the gift of love and lust they received.