The Vessel

No one remembers her name.

Her real name anyway.

She was a girl once- a regular girl, a good girl- who worked as a harlequin for her family's tiny traveling show.

She had a white painted face, with a happy painted red smile.

Jolly jinglin' shoes, and bright purple-dyed pigtails that bobbed comically as she capered about on the stage of some, now long-fallen kingdom.

She made nobles and peasants alike laugh.

She made the children clap and sing along to her often silly, but ultimately sweet, songs.

But one day, she vanished.

Taken.

Dragged off into the deep dark night by robed men, zealots of some ancient, twisted and unholy 'God'.

They called her a perfect vessel.

They brought her to a place that smelled like syrup and rot.

Some forgotten, long-discarded place- a ruin beneath a ruin, lit by black twisted candles that never seemed to burn down.

While there, they fed her things.

Sweet things- sugar root, infused honey, and constantly a strange pink and purple nectar that fizzed pleasantly on her tongue at first, then burned like acid all the way down her chest.

She ate and drank it all, because she was starving, and because when she did, the robed men would smile and say she was a 'Good girl'- and because when she didn't, they beat her.

It wasn't until the crawling sensations within her body began that she truly began to fear for her life.

And then, days later, when it was no longer a sensation but something visible to the naked eye- the real nightmare began.

They started putting things in her.

Fat little grubs, half-alive and fetid, still wriggling.

The robed men stitched them into her sides, into her sex, and whispered to her as she screamed.

They told her she would be Beautiful. Strong. Eternal.

She changed, over months.

Slowly, and horribly. Her face - still painted white, false red smile - smiling even as her skin grew soft and sticky, like taffy left out in the sun.

Her breath, which smelled of rancid sugar, on exhale turned to a noxious gas that made others see visions; weep, grow violent, or go simply mad.

Her legs stretched, cracked, and twitched unnaturally.

She heard terrible, terrifying things in the dark.

A constant chittering. Clicking.

Sometimes, screams mixed with syrupy giggles.

A sweet-sounding lullaby then horrible sound of tearing flesh, bones crunching, followed by wet, gurgling gulps.

Only sometimes did she realize that she was the terrifying thing in the dark.

Eventually, the robed men stopped coming.

Maybe they were caught.

Maybe she ate them all.

She can't remember.

With her captors all long gone - or dead - she eventually crawled down, deeper into the ruins beneath the ruins, driven by her new and relentless hunger, she

traversed through many tunnels, slithering through broken stone, all the while singing bits of old lines and songs she remembered from her childhood on the stage.

Eventually, her tongue grew long and furred.

Her limbs grew many, and she further evolved.

She can't remember her name now.

Or that she was a regular girl.

A good girl, even.

They call her a demon now.

An ancient, disgusting thing.

They say the sewers are cursed.

They say the sweet scent of sugar means certain death.

They say that if you hear singing in the dark, it's already too late.

But she's not a demon. Not really...

but she is hungry.