“For what?” he asked, cocking a brow at her.
“Making me laugh,” she explained, those pink lips curling into a smile. His hand lingered near hers so she took it, her fingers dancing gently across his.
Again it twitched, grinding its long teeth against its gums.
The closet door flung open as Cathy pushed her arm forward with something in it, a bottle whose contents were now surging towards the creature as it was distracted.
Rubbing alcohol spewed into the Womb’s eyes and was immediately absorbed by the retina. They turned pitch black around the edges as the blood vessels in them exploded, sending the tar the monster used for blood into its pupils. It thrust its head backward and screamed something that couldn’t be described in human terms, though it was clear it was the creature’s version of a vile curse. Its hands went to its face instinctively, which only resulted in it tearing at its own eyes with its talons.“Ma-gda!” it bellowed, finally opening its eyes again in time to see Cathy bolting towards the door.
It screamed longer and louder than she had ever heard it. Although it wasn’t English, it sounded like Phillips screaming for her return in the school. As she re-entered the hallway, it occurred to her that she had managed to piss it off.
She stepped on the shattered remains of the vase, a large chunk sticking through her shoe and into her foot. Hissing in pain, she tumbled to the floor again, this time catching herself. When she tried to get up again, she felt a weight on her back and looked over her shoulder to see that face of the Black Womb through clumps of her dark hair, its piercing eyes like greenish-blue spotlights. “No!” she cried, even as it raised its hand again.
“She looks much tastier than I remembered...” Phillips said, the voice cutting through the darkness. “Let’s have us a taste, then?”
“No...” Cathy protested, trying in vain to get her attackers off of her.
Spider broke off she and Xander’s kiss and looked at him. “Don’t forget. Pain is your power.”
Pain is your power.
From somewhere deep inside, the consciousness of Xander Drew let loose with one final push for freedom. The creature’s eyes began to glow red as it brought its talons up and again started to tear at its own face, falling backward off of Cathy and screaming. Then, without any other warning the black ooze fell from his body as if it suddenly lost the ability to cling there, splashing against the floor and leaving a thin layer of blood surrounding Xander’s naked form. He pushed back a scream, falling to the floor and shuddering. He was cold, even though it was quite humid here in the house. Slowly, he crawled over to Cathy and held her close to him.
She pulled away from him, her eyes filled with uncertainty and fear as her lip curled slightly in disgust.
“It’s alright,” he said softly. “It’s alllll right.”
Her body shaking as she finally let go of everything she’d been holding onto, she collapsed into his arms and pressed her face against his naked, blood-drenched chest and started to cry in massive heaves, wrapping her arms around him. He stroked her hair as best he could, making a soft shushing sound to try and calm her.
There, alone and naked with her in the dark as her clothes hung off of her, he realized what Spider had been trying to tell him all along. Pain is my power, he thought, his eyes growing so wide that he was physically unable to shut them. His hand began to shake. It wasn’t his pain that had triggered the Womb and saved them both, or the transformation back. It wasn’t his suffering. The thing that had triggered it at Sara’s wake, in the fever dream and just now was emotion. The desire to protect his friends. It was their pain. He looked down at Cathy, shivering in his arms. Her pain.
He found this information sick, twisted, and absolutely no help at all.
Dr. Darren Phillips walked down the hall of Coral Beach High School towards his office the next day, a broad smile across his lips. He was confident of his own immortality and had even enjoyed the fifteen-minute walk to work today, just as Greer Donaldson had attempted to do not long before. The thought brought a smile to his face and a song to his heart as he skipped over the stairs, waving to Tommy, Sud and some girl he hadn’t seen much of. Then he waved to Randy, the young man smiling back at him.
He was humming the Cheshire Cat song from Alice in Wonderland without a care in the world. Those kids couldn’t pin anything on him, he’d made sure of it. Cathy was known for crying rape and Drew was long suspected of being a gang member and a killer. The police wouldn’t believe anything they said, if that... thing hadn’t killed them anyway. He hadn’t found a trace of either of them when he ventured home to dispose of Al and Raine’s bodies. It was no matter anyway. He’d kill them soon enough.
He twirled a key around his index finger, the tag on it saying something about how life was unpredictable. It was a line from that song by that guy in that band. Everyone knew it. Phillips stopped the key where it was and tried to shove it into the keyhole of his office. That was when he noticed that his door was open, just a little. Curiouser and curiouser. He chuckled inwardly, pushing the door open to see who was inside.
Mike and Derek both sat casually
