𝓐 𝓦𝓸𝓶𝓮𝓷’𝓼 𝖂𝖔𝖗𝖑𝖉

The air was thick with a smoky haze of spent fireworks and oncoming rain. Mary walked with her head down, her sneakers scuffing against the cracked concrete of the sidewalk. It was the Fourth of July in Mulberry, but the celebration had long since curdled into something heavy and silent under the bruised, midnight sky, like someone gave the universe a shiner.

Mary Caldwell reached the intersection of Lincoln and Continental, stepping off the curb just as a car hissed past, its taillights bleeding into the wet reflections on the road.

She was a hollowed-out twenty-two-year-old woman. For her, the relentless grind culture wasn't a suggestion but a way of life. The service industry had already begun to wear her down like an abusive Boyfriend. It certainly left her bank account empty like one.

The fluorescent lighting of the diner had dulled her shoulder-length blonde hair. It was hastily pinned back with a handful of mismatched, rusting bobby pins. It was a terrible habit she picked up to keep her hair out of her face while clearing grease-stained tables.

The faint, bruised shadows under her icy blue eyes weren't just from a single late night; they were the permanent stamps of chronic exhaustion, etched deep into a pale, gaunt face that rarely saw the sun. If she was one of the living dead, no one could tell the difference.

But on her feet. She felt like the dead, like a sock worn until holes had formed. - And what was the difference between a zombie and a worn-out sock? They were both falling apart.

She stood shivering in her work uniform, a stiff, faded polo shirt that smelled faintly of old fryer oil and cheap dish soap, paired with a pair of worn, stiff jeans that chafed against her skin. Her non-slip sneakers, worn thin at the soles and split at the seams, offered no protection against the piss-warm summer rain. The dirty street water soaked straight through to her socks with every heavy, defeated step.

Behind her, the neon sign for the Burger Station hummed a low, erratic song, casting a greasy red and white glow across the wet asphalt. Across the street, the warm, amber lights of O’Charley’s leaked out onto the pavement, where a few lingering patrons huddled under the awning. Their voices muffled by the distance. The last dying gasp of today's business.

American flags hung limp from the lampposts, damp from an earlier drizzle, looking more like discarded raincoats than symbols of celebration.

Mulberry was supposed to be picturesque. The postcard of small-town charm. But tonight, the shadows stretched too long, and the quiet felt less like peace and more like a warning against those with careless or reckless ambitions. Mary hugged herself tighter. Her thumb traced the strap of her purse as she kept walking into the dark.

Two figures stepped from the shadows between two buildings, cutting off her path.

The younger woman moved with an aggressive, predatory stride. Her low-cut, shredded band shirt hung precariously off one shoulder, exposing a pale, small, firm breast and a stiff nipple hardened against the biting night air. She wore a faded baseball cap pulled low over matted hair, shadowing eyes that locked forward with cold intent. Her lace-less, worn-out shoes slapped heavily against the pavement, each step deliberate and closing the distance.

Beside her, the older woman rolled forward in a heavy, exhausted slouch that looked less like weakness and more like a coiled spring. Layers of filthy, open fabric dragged against her sagging breasts, flapping wide with every step to reveal the pale, wrinkled folds of her stomach. Her hiked-up skirt offered no modesty, exposing the dark, unkempt thatch between her thick thighs as she marched forward without a trace of shame or hesitation. Her face was a weathered mask of deep, grim lines, framed by tangled grey hair that clung to her cheeks and the corners of a slack, breathless mouth.

They didn’t call out. They just kept coming.

A car passed by. In the headlights, Mary saw eyeshine like the predatory glare of a nocturnal animal caught in the road.

But these weren't animals; they were people.

The moment they stepped into the harsh glare of a streetlight, the air grew instantly colder.

In the sudden, jaundiced illumination, their eyes were revealed to be violet orbs that sparkled with unnatural, sickly radiance in sunken sockets. The eerie purple light cast sharp, jagged shadows across the younger woman’s exposed skin and threw the deep, weathered wrinkles of the older woman’s face into terrifying relief.

They paced a tight, ten-foot stretch of the sidewalk like caged predators. Their movements were erratic and hyper-kinetic, full of jerky, unnatural twitches that made their hips roll with an unsettling, insect-like rhythm.

Suddenly, the older woman lunged forward.

Before Mary could react, the creature’s fingers clamped around her wrist. The skin was shockingly cold and clammy, holding the unmistakable, dead chill of a corpse. Mary instinctively twisted and pulled, pouring all her weight into a desperate attempt to break free. It was useless. The older woman’s grip was unyielding. It was an impossible strength like frozen iron.

The younger girl circled behind her with a stealth that seemed less human than the soft padding of some nocturnal thing that had crawled up from the lightless underways of the city. Her chilly fingers, long and unclean, slid beneath the faded polo of the poor, struggling woman, seeking the soft flesh beneath with a deliberate, proprietary hunger. Those icy digits found the tender buds of her breasts and lingered there, coaxing them into a shameful, involuntary stiffness; a perverse awakening that made Mary’s flesh betray her even as her mind recoiled in loathing.

Mary sought to scream, to thrash, to call upon whatever residual strength still flickered in her limbs. Yet the older woman’s grip was a thing of iron and ancient malice, unbreakable, as though the very tendons of her hands had been reinforced by some unhallowed compact with forces that dwell beyond the ordered structure of the world. That grip held Mary’s arms pinned, her torso forced into an arch of helpless exposure, while the younger creature worked with feverish purpose.

With a single, wrenching motion, the second woman dragged the denim downward, exposing the thin barrier of Mary’s undergarments and the trembling, unwilling flesh they poorly concealed. Then the elder of the two, whose face was a map of weathered iniquity, whose tangled grey hair clung like grave-moss, lowered herself with a terrible, deliberate grace. Kneeling in the damp filth of the pavement, she spread Mary’s thighs with hands that knew no pity, parting the soft, reluctant folds as one might open a forbidden grimoire. Her tongue, hot and insistent and somehow wrong in its wet insistence, forced its way inward, invading the most private recesses with a relentless, probing violation that spoke not of ordinary lust but of some deeper, more abominable appetite. An appetite that sought not merely flesh, but the unraveling of the soul through the very gates of the body.

Mary’s struggles grew feebler as the older woman’s mouth worked with a grotesque devotion, the wet sounds of the act mingling with the distant city noises into a chorus of private damnation. The younger one, still behind, continued her cold caress of Mary’s breasts, pinching and rolling the stiffened peaks while whispering disconnected obscenities that seemed half-remembered from some elder, unspeakable liturgy. In that moment, the sidewalk, Burger Station's erratic lulaby, and O’Charley’s amber lights all became the outer court of a private abyss, wherein two derelict vessels of human wreckage enacted upon their victim a rite of pure sexual perversion, stripping not only clothing but the last illusions of bodily sanctity, leaving only the raw, shivering knowledge that some hungers are older and fouler than the human spirit can endure.

As Mary’s strength waned, her eyes went from icy blue to violet. She stopped struggling as something foul took root in the absence of her innocence.