The Host

[Rumours of Yew]

The snivelling little shits were always carrying something, this occasion was no bloody different and now the parasites had passed it onto him. Yet despite all the time she spent around them their chunder of a mother never seemed to catch anything, let alone keel over and die. He supposed it was too much to hope that one day his dream might come true and the grotesque little brats might be caught in an avalanche of the flab and baked goods that had given birth to them.

Still, it was his time on the road as a roving trader that kept him going and the knowledge that a quick visit to his favourite brothel on the outskirts of Yew awaited him seemed to make each blistered step worth the stinging torture. Popping a nut pilfered from the bowl at his last rest stop into his rotten-toothed maw, he smiled with satisfaction, life might be one miserable event after another but a night with Chastity would soon set him straight.

[Rumours of Yew]

Nobody had come out all day they'd said. Must've been one hell of a party inside and with the missus entertaining Aunt Flo and Cousin Red for the next week, Little Ted needed a little hospitality of his own.
The old wooden door hung precariously on its hinges but that was far from an irregularity, in fact it had been Ted himself who had ploughed into the very same door only three or four months earlier after losing his footing during a hasty retreat from the bar. He had paid his tab now, there had been little choice in the matter but at least he'd been allowed back in from time to time.

He swung open the door with an urgent enthusiasm, stepping into the dimly little hallway. Inside the scene was a slight contrast to what he had become accustomed to in this his favourite bawdy house, men and women alike groaned weakly, many draped helplessly over one another in living heaps upon the floor. Others probed the darkness with uncertainty, calling out in astonishment, surprise and even terror as they found another helpless wanderer. Then there were those that simply sat jabbering away to themselves.
The bizarre scene did little to discourage Ted, he had seen this before; nightshade could have baffling effects on the human body. Instead he strode on through the hallways, approaching the door of his favourite girl.
The name "Chastity" emblazoned across it in giant gold lettering always filled him with a unique sense of trepidation and excitement. He inhaled deeply, knocked twice as he always had, then twisted the knob and entered.

His final act of free will.

[Rumours of Yew]

Rational thought had abandoned her. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months? The concept of time too complex for her to comprehend. No thoughts, only urges, instincts, yearnings.
A single constant drifting through a decaying conscious:

"Breed."

[Rumours of Yew]

His consciousness awakened with a rupture of colours and primitively gurgled thoughts, he was moving, that much he could tell, although perhaps being dragged along the ground was a more accurate description of how he felt as he was making this particular journey.
Utter blackness only interrupted by blurs of feverish reds was all he could see, his eyes were weak, too heavy to open wide to the light above. Yet focusing hard and with great concentration his eyelids parted, the blinding light from the late evening sun smouldering as he blinked from the scarlets and oranges.

The sight before him was as bewildering as it was alien, a heap of writhing diseased flesh and gore, sliding, dragging, and crawling its way with two powerful, rippling arms towards a group of humanoids. The noise was horrific; in addition to the bloodcurdling screams and ferocious roars of what appeared to be soldiers there was an undercurrent of slurping and squelching as gooey flesh slithered along the damp grass, leaving behind a bloody residue, slime similar to that of a snail's.

He watched in perplexity, his peripheral vision incapable of making out anything but the emerging violent scene ahead.
Eventually the hacking, slashing, stabbing and cacophony of brutality ceased, the creature bowed, its flesh receding and its colour paling.

Only then did their awareness turn to him, their ferocity reignited as their charge began in earnest. On they came, their feet trampling over the ground between them, before their heavy armour and their sharpened implements of war ploughed into him, only their charge faltered, the line crumbled, many falling to their feet as they began to turn and take flight.
Why were they attacking him? What had he done? He had to run, had to flee before they came again, struggling to move, failing as he battled against paralysis, his eyes searching, seeking, confused by the sight beneath, the bloodied tissue, his misshapen torso, a third eye, a fourth eye, a mouth, another, what had happened? Where was he? What was he?
The realisation arrived as he looked on to the now receded flesh of the lifeless creature in the distance, the many orifices, the eyes, the carcasses, the appendages and the bloodied skin.
He gazed down again, struggling to comprehend; his first instinct to scream, his second to shout but no noise, no sound... no mouth... no longer.

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