THE TEMPLE OF THE BODY
THE TEMPLE OF THE BODY
by Eric Netterlund
I drift through the high desert alone, and the foothills bow at my heels. I have slept through centuries, but now awake my stomach complains at its own emptiness. The distant lights of a settlement beckon me. Maybe they will give me sustenance, an offering.
Before I reach the congregation of lights, a lone building rises from the horizon. Lit in harsh white, a road stretches up to one side of this cubical structure. A woman in strange clothes departs—everything is strange when I first wake. I examine my garments, and at my will they transform to match the woman’s attire.
As I approach the door, it opens for me. A suitable deference. This must be a holy place. A place of offering, waiting on my return.
No one waits in the outer room, its walls bare of any standards or icons. Sounds of exertion coming from further inside the building draw me further into this anemic temple.
The interior is arranged in a grid of mechanisms, many of them empty. An elderly man stands on top of one of them as it churns his arms and legs. He stares back at me, but regret for that choice drips down his face. He shrivels under my gaze—an unworthy acolyte.
Several young men marked my entrance, and I advance towards a huddle of four that discuss my approach. Their generous smiles welcome me, and one swaggers over to a bench placed beneath a metal bar, the bar adorned on either side with wheels. I follow and loom over the bar as he wriggles underneath. He raises the bar and lowers it to his neck. He repeats this motion and shifts an expectant gaze to me.
I recognize this act—an offering. I accept. My abdomen splits open and encapsulates his head, and with a wet crackle, I consummate the simulated decapitation he used to offer himself to me. The bar falls, and his ribs crunch.
The companions collapse back, scrambling away from their friend. Their mellifluous screams are the adulations I have sought—an invocation of my truest self.
Through their cries, I extend my arms and gather them to me—they have been party to a ritual, and so they are my children. Like a good mother in times of famine, I will consume them. Their bulky frames will serve to whet my appetite.
This form is of little use to me now. I shed the shell that has been straining to contain me. All light leaves the room, absent in the fullness of my presence. Each little morsel squirms in the darkness and my tendrils reach out to every one of them, hundreds of mouths worrying at their meat.
The air fills with the muted smacks of flesh peeling from bone, as tendons snap and muscle rips. I crack a bone, and suck all the marrow out of it. Delicious.
I walk out into the night smiling. I am gratified. I starve no longer.
Time for the main course.
Fiction © Copyright Eric Netterlund
Image by D. Strohl
Eric Netterlund writes weird and sometimes horrifying stories in Minneapolis. You can find his work in Bag of Bones Press’s 206 Word Stories and Annus Horribilis anthologies.
You can find him on Twitter @ericnetterlund
