:: There Was a Woman There was a woman. She was fey and feral and angry at everything. There was a spider. She was busy and dedicated to her craft of catching. They are one and the same. [[Continue]] :: Continue The woman, with eyes that seem constantly seeing things that only she can see. She seems to look at things at all the odd angles, like she's figuring out the best way to see them. When she talks, her voice is faint but cold hearted and there's a snarl almost constantly forming at the edge of her lips when she speaks. It only lessens when she talks about catching things. Hacking things at the joint. The wrong scent of iron and shit when you burst an intestine. When she talks about catching things, she finally seems to see whoever she's talking to. It's not comforting that she sees the world around her when she talks about catching. She's sizing up what she will catch next. Or who. [[The story begins.]] :: There Was a Woma Untitled Story :: The story begins. I was a photographer, dedicated to my craft as she was to hers witht he same fervor and passion. I was doing a piece on this war torn area of Iran and I was having a hard time trying to find interesting pictures that no one else had done before. It was either take pictures of the buildings, those still standing and those crumbling back to the earth, or it was take pictures of the people. Everyone in this area was skeptical of me on sight and it's not like I could blame them. If my whole world had been destroyed all for the sake of world peace I wouldn't trust a foreigner either. They were all held together just barely by their sense of resilience but even that was crumbling, just like the buildings. I've been here two days already and I've only taken a dozen photographs. What should I shoot next? [[Walk around to photograph buildings]] [[Walk around to photograph people]] :: StoryAuthor Maria, a local witch :: Walk around to photograph buildings There are buildings around that are visually interesting and might make a good picture. Mostly mosques and frescos but the bright light of the sun paints everything in an honest way. Nothing can hide from the sun here. After taking a few more pictures of the buildings, I decide that I want to take a break and find a cafe or something that might still be open despite how... sad this area is. [[Look for a cafe]] :: Walk around to photograph people What was once a very welcoming and inviting town has become closed off and blind to anything but their anger. Too many reporters have come down here to "tell the story" of those that were able to survive all of the moments of war that continued to weigh heavily on everything, espeically the people. So the town has clearly become less friendly to the cameras. I think the thing of it all was that the reporters get to go back home after this. Some of these people don't even have homes to go back to anymore. It's hard finding anyone willing to stop for a photograph, even though I speak enough Arabic that there aren't any major language barriers. The men shield their women and their women stare at me from behind their religious cloaks and I feel nothing but a sense of tired frustration from everyone. Eventually, it feels just too taxing to keep getting rejected at every turn so I decide I could use something to drink. [[Look for a cafe]] :: Look for a cafe The cafe itself was airy and soft in a way that didn't make sense with the area anymore. There was no sense of thinly veiled panic that seemed to have made itself a home in this town. ​ Every window was open and the small metal fans were working double time to cool off this tiny oasis. ​ I order an iced coffee and it takes the small man behind the counter barely any time to make it. He insists that I drink it just like it is and even though I take my coffee mostly milk, I take a sip to please him. ​ It's better than I thought black coffee could ever be. ​ Paying for my drink, I head outside, not quite sure what to do next. ​ That's when I see her. ​ [[We meet]] :: We meet She was the only woman not wearing a religious cloak to protect herself from the devious eyes of men. She was small, and tan, and her hair was long and ratty and she was in no way appealing to look at. She had long, thin fingers that were constantly forming claws at her sides when she talked about almost anything. They were relaxed when I asked her about her livelihood. I’m not one to believe in superstitions or folklore or whatever it is someone uses to explain natural phenomenon but if I had been told, after meeting her the first time on the street corner at high noon in a bombed-out city that there was a spider woman, attracted to death and catching weak prey here… Well, I would’ve known it was her. There was no one else who looked like her, no one else with such a sick joy in their eyes when talking about how devastated the area was. She might make a good picture... But she does seem crazy... would she even see me through her delirium? [[Approach her]] [[Keep looking]] :: Keep looking She was the epitome of an attack on all the senses. She looked and smelled like shit and her voice was loud and yet directionless as I watched her with my iced coffee. It came to me that this was what war did. They made respectable people turn into... her. I felt detatched from the sentiment, though, and didn't have the courage to approach that level of insanity, no matter how good of a picture it might be. I was too new at this, too green, to come up against someone like her. That was my excuse as I walked away. But she weighed on my mind as I wandered and took mediocre pictures at best. Dammit... She was the only thing worth photographing... [[Let's see her again]] [[No, keep looking for something better]] :: Approach her I just thought she was insane and made for a good picture. She wasn’t beautiful by any conventional standard but there was something alluring about her. Something hypnotic about her snarling lips and the flashes of red tongue when she spoke (mostly to herself) that had me wanting to hear her talk. Her words were rough on my ears, even though I spoke enough Arabic to get around without a guide. It was something about the way she said them, like she had known them a long time and was able to play with syllables oddly. She trilled and clicked when it was unnecessary and it reminded me of fingers tapping against a smooth surface. [[Let's see her again]] [[No, keep looking for something better]] :: Let's see her again A week I spent just talking to her when no one else would, finding her always in the same general area, until I felt like I could ask to take her picture. Her rough chittering faded, her eyes going focused to me for maybe only the third time since meeting, and she clicked her tongue once, watching me, studying me. ​ When she said yes, I thanked her warmly and told her I would come back tomorrow, when the lighting would flatter her the best. In reality, earlier times of day seemed to suit her better which was fine by me. Her glaring hadn’t quite gotten the strength to be more than a glower and her words were not stitched together at unnatural angles. Perhaps suiting her isn’t the right phrase… calmed her? Or maybe, weakened her. I didn’t spend all day with her but I tried to catch her at different times throughout the day. My hotel was a few blocks off and she liked to squat outside the few cafes that were still in business. ​ An untrained eye would think she was begging but by the third day I knew she was just staking her claim to the land. It was in the way she would piss gracelessly in open alleyways and strip from her tatters to change into slightly fresher ones barely hidden in an alcove. ​ Among all the religious women in this part of the world, here was this sinner baring all to the eyes of the Holy and devout and she was too ugly to ignore but it was so easy to be drawn in by her dark face and darker eyes. ​ [[The picture]] :: No, keep looking for something better A week I spent trying to keep those rage-infested eyes from my mind but she was pervasive. The last couple of days, though, I actually was able to get some shots that I really liked: a mosque still intact, a few people smiling, and a child running after a dog. While everyone else would be looking at the destruction, I tried to look for the good things. The things that death hadn't taken yet. On the last stretch of my trip in this desolate Iranian city, I went to that cafe that I had gone to almost a week ago now. It was a mistake. All of the memories of this insane woman, the overwhelming need to look at her and try and understand what she was thinking came rushing back at the smell. That was all it took for me to come up to her and try and ask for her picture. Her rough chittering faded, her eyes going focused to me for maybe the first time in a long time for her and she clicked her tongue once, watching me, studying me. When she said yes, I thanked her warmly and told her I would come back tomorrow, when the lighting would flatter her the best. In reality, I had a feeling that she wouldn't be quite as... aggressive on the senses if she was freshly woken. The next day, the theory proved true. Her glaring hadn’t quite gotten the strength to be more than a glower and her words were not stitched together at unnatural angles. Perhaps early morning suiting her isn’t the right phrase… calmed her? Or maybe, weakened her. An untrained eye would think she was begging but the stench told me otherwise. There was something predatory about this location and her. I knew she was just staking her claim to the land. It was in the way she would piss gracelessly in open alleyways and strip from her tatters to change into slightly fresher ones barely hidden in an alcove. Among all the religious women in this part of the world, here was this sinner baring all to the eyes of the Holy and devout and she was too ugly to ignore but it was so easy to be drawn in by her dark face and darker eyes. [[The picture]] :: Escape The first thing I did was empty out my bank account. ​ The second thing I did was drive until I ran out of gas. ​ The third thing was get on a boat, going to Norway. ​ Part of me was just trying to get away. The gravity of leaving my whole life behind suddenly felt easy. The core of my being knew she was looking for me, hunting me, desperate to get me because I had been perhaps the first person in a long time to see her. ​ To see what she had become. ​ Another part of me was thinking that the colder it was, the less strength she might have. She was a desert thing, after all. ​ [[Norway]] :: Norway The great frozen north and I became aquainted in a way I never thought we would. Even when I had landed on the shore, it wasn't particularly cold at this time of year but there was a sense that it would be. Soon. I took a bus, my money looking fey in this country but after a currency exchange I was better off than I had been. The farther north I got, the calmer I felt. This was foreign land to her. She wasn't something of power here. She was an outsider and perhaps the natives that were like her wouldn't take kindly to the intrusion. It was the only hope I had. Before Iran, I would never have talked about gods or religion or any of that, well, bullshit. I believed in me. No one else was helping me out so why should I bother with that shit? When I finally got to a town that made me feel at ease, the locals unused to tourists this far north but also uncaring to my reasons, it felt like this was going to be a safe space. These people barely spoke English and their language just sounded intelligible to me. They understood my rough pantomime, though, and that's all I needed to find a place to stay and a job. They didn't ask me why I was here but I could see in some of the eyes of the women that they sensed something was hanging over me. Perhaps, even though this was not her land, she was still felt in the blood of the women. Her ferocity and ferality that all women knew at one time in their lives or another... I stayed away from the women after I had that thought. It was six months of going to a day laboring job, shoveling coal and chopping down trees. The men and women on the crews I worked only looked down on me because I had a hard time getting the hang of everything, not because of my gender or appearance. That felt... at least like some kind of acceptance. My body was not used to hard labor but I knew, in the back of my mind, that my home and my country was lost to me. So long as she had her eye trained on my back, I could never return. I had to make this work. And work I did. I hoped that one day, she would find another target. [[Today]] :: Let's go home Simple as that, I went back to my life. I won a few awards for the picture of the ugly woman in the beautifully destroyed city and the monetary aspect of it kept me from temping for a while. It was nice to just be a photographer and not someone who just has a hobby. Of course there were nights when I spent too much of my earnings and woke up berating my drunken desires but I was able to work on nothing but photography for a year. Sure, it may have been a frugal year in most aspects but it worked well because I was able to keep being a photographer and keep making money off of the prints that would be featured in magazines that snooty art people wanted to frame. Even though she was the one who got me this level of acclaim, no one wanted her portrait. The buyers would reference her but they never wanted her. I found it odd that people could know who I was because of this one picture but none of them wanted it. Eventually I had to ask why not when it came to her and a lot of the answers repeated the same key words. [[What was it about her?]] :: What was it about her? I couldn’t have that hanging in the den, she’d scare the kids, she’s ugly, she’s ugly, she’s ugly. They weren’t wrong but I tried to think of what it was specifically about her that was so ugly and this was at least 7 months after I had taken her picture. Her eyes were black like mud and her hair was ratty and her exposed breasts were misshapen but I think what really made her so unappealing to the eye was her shamelessness. Her being ugly only affected others, not herself. Her appearance wasn’t a problem to her and thus, in some way, she had this shamelessness that was borderline confidence. She was secure in herself enough that her image wasn’t important. People were unnerved by her venomous gaze and the jagged line of her mouth and the self-importance that radiated off her even in print. My life had become what I had thought I wanted for a long time. I was steadily becoming a name in the art world, my pieces were chosen for several prominent magazines, and I got to travel a lot. But she was always there in the back of my mind, staring at me with those eyes full of insanity and yet total understanding. My life had become relatively successful due to her and my dreams had become more and more populated with nightmares. There were so many nights when, after the party of the week had ended and I was already fighting a hangover in my bed that I would thrash, or so I was told by whoever was staying the night. I would be seized by these overwhelming images and I could never remember them clearly by the time I woke up and I apparently didn't say much while I tore at the bed through them. The one thing I did say, haltingly, brokenly was, // "Druj..."// I couldn't let this get to me, though. I refused to let these nightmares get to me. [[Best not to dwell on it]] :: Run away as hard as you can Fight or flight, that instinct that we're born with that helps us know when to pick our battles or when to turn tail. But how could I fight this? I could feel what this was, in that subconcious part of my brain, and I knew that she was lurking just beyond this entry way. I don't know how she got here, and I still don't care. At the time, though, I was hellbent on getting away. It had taken her almost a year to get there, so I might have time... right? I wrench my arm out of the man's grasp, watching something flash in his eyes that was akin to nothing but pure, unadulterated wrath. I took the half second of seperation to turn and vault down the stairs, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't end up twisting my ankle on the landing. It takes me another five seconds max to get my keys out and get into my car, turning it on and blindly putting it into reverse and rocketing backwards. I hit the car behind me with a harsh, metalic crunch, and I can't even care an ounce as I put my car into drive and burst out of the parking space. I don't look back, I can't. I can feel those eyes on me, her eyes. She had set a trap for me and I was getting away. I can feel her anger, even as I drive like a madman out onto the road. I can't even clear the city before I notice the pain in my arm where her...her victim had grabbed me. The pain had been eclipsed by the adrenaline but now it was starting to throb. Hoping that I had enough of a head start on her, I pull over into a parking spot, but not turning my car off. As I roll up my sleeve, I get why my arm had been hurting so bad. From where he had grabbed me, even through my shirt sleeve, he had left a mark of her. I stare in shock and horror at my blackened, pus-coated arm. The skin looks burnt to the point of charring, the skin having bubbled up in the shape of a hand. A vice-like hand. My eyes water as the pain of a deeply invasive burn begins to overwhelm my frazzeled and startled senses. A couple of spluttering breaths are all I can manage before I roll my sleeve back down and get back onto the road. I will not let her take me this easily. [[Escape]] :: The picture We took the picture at dawn, when the sky was painted rose and amber and lilac. You’d think that that lighting would flatter anyone but here she was, looking like someone had wiped their ass and left the crumpled paper in the sun. It was the only fitting idea for what it felt like to see her that early and in that perfect lighting. She was a shit stain on a painting and despite how miserable and vicious she looked, it was somehow the best picture I could’ve taken of her. It was honest of the area and of her. Her dark eyes pierced through the lens and I wondered if this was the most eye contact she’s ever made in her life. She did it well, though, and I was entranced by this ugly woman in beautiful light. I took a few more shots, asking her to not look at me but she didn’t listen. It didn’t matter. The first shot was easily the best and I brought the camera over to show her. She stared down at the camera and her claw-like hands came up and I had to fight the urge to pull away so she wouldn’t touch my equipment. I wasn’t afraid of her stealing anything, she had made no moves to step closer to me than she had to, but I worried that her grime would smudge and leave a mark. I shouldn’t have been so judgmental but you didn’t see her or smell her for that matter. Her existence was an assault on the senses. Still, I watched as her long, thin finger came up and she tapped her picture on the digital screen and she clicked and chittered through saying she liked it. Somehow I was happy to have made her something she liked. I told her, smiling, that I would give her the first copy and she nodded feverishly, again not looking at anything in particular. To pay her for her time (I don’t know if she actually had time because time is a concept of man and she seemed to somehow exist outside of human concepts) I bought her 30 dollars worth of food. She clutched the bag to her chest like a mother would to a baby and wandered down her alleyway without another word to me. I could see her in the growing light squatting behind the dumpsters and I could hear the plastic rustling as she picked and poked her way through the bag. [[Is that all?]] :: Return to her and give her the first picture printed I kept my word to her, though, and stopped by her alley later that day with the first picture that had been printed because somehow, I thought she’d know if it wasn’t the first and I still can’t tell you how I knew that. She held it between her long, dark fingers and she looked pleased in some way. Pleased and curious and it took everything in my power to not flinch when she looked at me like that. It was like she was looking at me in a new light and it burned me through with it's intesnsity. But the moment fell away and I released a breath I didn't know I had been holding, thanking her one more time before going to my hotel. Finally I can go home! [[Let's go home]] :: Is that all? I’d like to say that that’s where it ended but that’d be a lie. I could say I left with the picture that would change my career and I’d become a famous photographer for this photo of a shit stain looking person on a pretty back drop but that would be a lie. I had the photos printed on good, glassy paper from the copy shop a lot of small business people frequent so it was dirt cheap and decent quality. It was done in the same day as I had taken the picture and I was already planning on going home now that I had what I thought was perfection captured on digital film. [[Return to her and give her the first picture printed]] [[Give her any copy you chose]] :: Today After seven months of being in Norway, the language was become a little less strange to me. I've kept mostly to myself, only going out on the nights when my logging crew invites me. They don't try to engage me too much but they do buy me at least two pints of their intense, viking beer. The wound on my arm has mostly healed, but the shape of a hand print is somehow burned into my skin. I don't wear short sleeves and I have considered getting it covered by a tattoo. My body has become strong and my eyes have become sharp. Even I get surprised by myself in the mirror. I had never expected to look like this in my existence, all lean muscle and a growing desire to fight my demon head on. I felt like I was growing into my body and it made me fueled with a new kind of hope. The hope that I could win. I still am not going to pursue her. But if she does come, maybe I could at least go out swinging. That's better than just letting her take me. I don't have a computer in my house, so I've been hand writing these memories. Despite the passage of time, it's all still fresh in my mind. There's a small library/elementary through high school set up in this small town and it has computers in it. There's only about a dozen but they're open to the public after the kids let out. I've been using them to look up things I know about her. To find out who she is. I honestly don't want to write down her name, I hate even thinking about her, but I need someone to know what I've been through. And to know her is to help explain. Her name is Druj. The flies are Druj Nasu, which I think means that they're apart of her or similar to her or under her control. It's all sort of hard to piece together. Even though I've been doing research, I still don't feel her like I had that day I left. The safety of the viking gods seems to have been granted to me. I still have a hard time admitting that she's some sort of... Zoroastrian demon god. She was the creature that combatted the god of Truth, making her the demon of lies and pestilence and especially wrath. Her anger is too apparent for her to be anything else. I've been trying to think of why me, you know? Why did I envoke the wrath of this angry, long-forgotten entity. I think that maybe, and this is just me talking to myself to try and work this out, that it was the photograph. She saw herself for the first time in a long time as what she had become. She was no longer some believed in being of evil that had her place in her world. She was a shit stain on the world. And that was the first time she had seen it. In a long time. As I'm writing this, my mug of bitter tea is cooling next to me and the guy behind me is trying to block me from seeing his screen. We both know he's looking at soft core porn. Whatever, I can't care about that. The days have been long and my soul has been heavy with her but it could be worse. I could be dead. I think tonight, I'll go home and cook up a flank of steak and mash some yams up. I didn't like yams before I got here but beggars can't be choosers. My last thought of this whole experience that I'll write down is this: Don't look into the eyes of madness. oijfewfafnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu i catch ittt n iiiittt s minnnneen n drujjjjjjjj s fillt [[Tomorrow]] :: Tomorrow You had left the library after saving your document, not seeing her message hiding beneath the line of the screen. You didn't notice the warmth of the air as you left and you didn't feel the eyes of the women trained on you. Seeing you for her. They will find you, rotted away in your home, flies covering every inch of exposed skin. When the flies are cleared, the police will gasp at how covered you are in shit and piss and spider's silk. Druj is filled. END. :: Go to London The drive to London doesn't fully clear my mind but the farther away I get from the cat and the flies, the calmer I feel. It was just some morbid trophy from a dog or even another cat. There was no way it meant anything in particular to me. That's what I kept telling myself on the drive. Oxford to London is almost 2 hours away and intially, getting into my car and speeding away from my apartment, I was feeling sick. My hands were clammy and my eyes were watering (it had to be the smell, not that huge, insurmountable fear that could not have been real) and I was fighting the urge to pull over to stop. It was quite literally a battle of my nerves to keep going, to not speed too much over the limit, to keep my eyes on the road and to forcefully block out the song of the flies. Still, though, the panic faded the farther I got and by the time I got into London, I had all but forgotten it. I found the guy's apartment with relative ease, pulling into a pay spot and using my card to buy myself a half hour. It was really supposed to be a simple trade off and it shouldn't honestly take more than 10 minutes but I was being safe. As I begin to climb up the steps to the guy's brownstone, I feel this sharp, sudden stab through my heart that makes me stop. I patted my chest a little frantically, suddenly wide eyed and full of that panic I thought I had escaped. There was no blood on my fingers but the sensation of being stabbed through was tearing the air from my lungs quickly, cruely. I blinked my eyes to rid them of the rising tears, unsure of where this sense of dread was coming from and I stumble up the last few steps. I try to take huge lungfuls of air, turning away from the door to try and get my composure before this total stranger saw me hyperventilating on his stoop. When my heart wasn't pounding so frantically in my chest, I turned to knock on the door only to see who I assumed was the guy selling the camera. He was looking at me like he didn't see my blatant anxiety, didn't sense it rolling off me in waves. He was an average, every day guy. Short, dark hair, a little mustache, nothing remarkable except his smile. His mouth was full of rotting, discolored teeth. Before I could even start to introduce myself, he took a step back, eyes blankly trained on me. That panic was there, at the edge of my mind, and I knew I couldn't go in there. Something was in there and it had traveled a long way to see me. I turned to run back to my car but a hand strikes out and wraps around my wrist with a strength I was sure would cause a break. I stare at him, this complete stranger with a mouth full of disease, and I have a choice to make. [[Go with him]] [[Run away as hard as you can ]] :: Best not to dwell on it I tried to play it off like it was nothing but stress and after a month or so of repeating the mantra that I was just stressed, it became true enough. ​ The dreams were still there but I fought them off with a torch and I would force them out of my mind upon waking. ​ I worked hard on my photography and I was determined to pour all of my energy into making the best photos I could. ​ It was about a year after getting back from Iran with nights full of flies and days full of photographs that I felt... something. ​ I was in the middle of running to get this really great old camera that I had found on Craigslist. It was in pretty good condition and it wasn't that expensive. It seemed like a great bargain and I knew that I had to move fast for it otherwise the guy selling it might realize he was about to take a loss. ​ The guy was listed in London and my apartment in Oxford meant I had to bust my ass to get out there. It was almost two hours away but I had made the drive so many times that I was considering looking up somewhere closer to London. That's where everything seemed to happen, anyway. ​ As I was hustling down to my car, slapping my pocket repeatedly to double and triple check that my wallet was there, I nearly fell flat on my face as I tried to side step something at the bottom of my stairs at the last second. ​ It wasn't a pretty maneuvor but it did make me miss this rotting cat carcass. ​ I stared at it in disbelief. This wasn't freshly dead or a victim of road kill (the road was at least 2 meters off), this was *rotting*. ​ Just as I had been startled by it's somehow sudden appearance, I was knocked back another step as the stench hit me. There was no mistaking it for the raw and metal scent of blood and shit. ​ I gagged and tried to lift the collar of my tee shirt up to block my nose, dry heaving into the fabric as I tried to pull my eyes away to little avail. ​ I was hypnotized by the cat, horrified at my inability to move and I watched with this sense of familiar dread rising up in my gut as a fly landed on part of it's exposed skull. ​ Then another. And another. ​ I watched until a massive swarm of flies covered the rotting cat, it's still intact eye gazing up at me blindly as the sound of the flies buzzing drowned out my own thoughts. ​ I watched, this inexplicable fear eating me alive from the inside out, as a fly walked over the eye and that's when I finally snapped out of it. ​ I blinked a few times, scrambling to turn and run to my car, starting it up and shooting down the drive to get away from the sound of the flies singing in their shit-eating voice words that felt too familiar, ​ *Drujjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj Nasssssssssssssu*... ​ [[Go to London]] :: Give her any copy you chose I picked one of the pictures that were a little splochy around the edges, not thinking that it mattered to her. Why should it? It's not like she had anywhere to hang it up or even a frame to put it in. I returned to her and gave her the picture, keeping the prettier copies tucked in my bag. She held it in between her thin, dark fingers and stared at it with an expression I still could never tell you about. It was like anger and greed and pride? Whatever that could be called. I didn't stay around long enough to let her direct that gaze upon me. [[Back to the real world]] :: Back to the real world The bus ride home was cramped and the poor air circulation made it feel like I was breathing in nothing but the second hand air of other people. It was intimate in an invasive way and left me feeling somewhat violated. The bus ride took most of the night, with only a few brief stops to let people relieve themselves or stretch their legs. The lungfuls of less stagnant air I got when I stepped outside of the bus was probably the only thing keeping me sane. When we got to the airport, dawn was dusting the horizon with sweet amber and soft lilac and it made me pause. Despite how exhausting this whole trip was, I had some good photographs and I could maybe, just maybe, survive. After getting home, the 10 hour plane ride depleting whatever strength I had left and I slept for the rest of the day and well into the next morning. My dreams were chaotic and turbulent and it's amazing I slept through it all. I woke up calmly enough, however my heart was fit to burst through the cage of my ribs. I couldn't remember anything from the dream that clearly... Except for the flies. Millions of them all drifting by not with the malaise that I was used to but a focus that made them unsettling. *Nazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzuuuu....* They droned in their collective yet singular voice. *Drujjjjjjjjjjjj Nazzzzzzzzzzzzzzuuu....* [[Best not to dwell on it]] :: Go with him I stare at a mouth full of rot and I cannot say no to the soundless voice that comes from it. I step further into the entryway and the blank stare of this poor soul, that was only a pawn in the scheme of someone far greater than either of us, transforms. I don't see it right away because he moves too quickly than I thought was possible to slam the door behind me, causing me to jump about a foot out of my skin. After he's slammed the door, I look into his eyes once more, the tears in my own blurring my vision, and I hope that whatever is left of him can see me. His eyes, though, I see them now. There is nothing but a sick, greedy pride and an anger so primal that it was surely not ever known to humans. As I open my mouth, hoping that I can somehow plead for my life, the man crashes to the floor like a discarded rag doll. I stare in shock and horror as the man---no the body, shows it's true shape. It was nothing but a rotting mass that might have been a man once. It was covered with flies, singing in their shared voice. It lays there, blocking the door, it's mouth permanently frozen in that smile that had been hers. My eyes close with a flutter, feeling the bile rising in my throat and with a strangled shout, I gasp before I heave all over the floor. The smell of vomit and rot is not one I will ever forget. It's sour, sharp, miserable. Wiping my mouth with the back of my shaking hand, I slowly stumble away from the entrance that was now lost to me forever. The house is still perfectly intact, no clear sign of her but the further I walked into the house, the more I could feel her. She was in the fabric of things or rather, the fabric of things had fallen into her web. She wasn't anywhere on the first floor and I wondered if she would want the cold and dark of a basement. But that isn't the environment I had found her in. With the certainty of my death hanging over me and a bravery that was not my own, I traveled upwards. She wasn't on the second floor but that didn't meant there wasn't visual evidence of her inhabiting this space. How long had she been here? The floors and walls were all covered with a combination of spider's silk, carcasses of smaller prey (cats, dogs, a child no older than 2) with their mouths all frozen in a silent scream, shit, and piss. The carcasses hung from the ceiling in their crysaline prisons, swaying in a breeze that surely came from the desert. I had become numb to the scent of death but that didn't stop my eyes from tearing in either sorrow or fear that I would become like those that had looked into her eyes full of insanity and wrath. I swallowed thickly, my mouth dry and my eyes watering. Time to face my maker. [[Call out to her]] :: Call out to her My voice is barely more than a whisper but I can feel her scuttling towards me, absolutely tuned into the way my voice shook and my heart collided with my ribs in a thunderous tattoo. I close my eyes, the last second that will ever be mine, and when I open them, I gasp and take a hard step back. Personal space didn't exist to her and I should have known better. She had been right in front of me, her eyes burning with this anger so great that it was palpable. "You have come." I blink a few times, leaning forward an inch to look at her like I didn't understand her. English? Since when...? "I know all words of things I eat." She says, her eyes becoming briefly ravenous. I try not to flinch but it doesn't stop my eye from twitching and from her smile becoming vicious. As she takes a step towards me, the sharpness of her nails suddenly hyper apparent to me, I have to ask her. Why me? What had I done to her? She pauses, staring at me like I was the one covered in shit and piss and rags and full of madness. "I am Druj of Pesitlence and Lies. You see me through your soul-capturing camera and I... I just want to watch you rot." She says it like it makes utter sense and it does. I had looked at this old, centuries old creature from the middle of Iran. She had sent her flies, singing their name in praise, and all she wanted was me. She didn't need another reason but there had to be more. I had to know. Her eyes flash with her scalding temper before she snaps and chitters at me, looking ready to lunge and sink her teeth into my throat. "A camera sees lies. Makes things look nice. Yours told the truth! I am the Defier of Truth!" Her words ring in my eyes, my fate sealed with her ancient identity having drawn me into her web. My mouth opens but no sound can come out except for the bubbling of my own blood rising in my throat from where she has sunk her teeth. The last thing I see is her, blood coating her chin and chest, and her wrathful eyes shining with that ugly, shameless pride. From her mouth, my throat hangs. END.