Oblation

Her inelastic skin was slowly depriving her of air, of life. She could not breath, talk, yet– helplessly– she clawed at the door in the floor. Her bloodied fingers pierced with splinters of woods. Her vacant howl went unheard. Pounding fiercely at the floor, her phalanx cracked. The fragments of bones floating effervescently through her bloodstream, like food in a fishbowl.

Rolling over, her ear to the floor, she could hear the faint whispers of the cloaked figures– those who had imprisoned her here. The spoke of otherworldly things, the likes of which she did not know: celestial beings in the sky, wretched creatures domiciled in dimensions beyond our comprehension. She was frightened, but even that she was weary of.

She’d been here for so long, and she was so enervated, that feeling afraid was nugatory.

There would be no hope of escape, this she knew unshakably. But death, in death, she could render their ceremony impossible. She did not know what it was they hoped to summon, or to please, but its reach would be universal. Be it slimy, ghastly creatures from the sea, as tall as mountains, or the spindly phantoms that so desperately wished to enter our plane, she needed to stop it. Death was the answer– it was her answer.

Her eyelids heavy, she crawled to a corner in the room. The floor, rough as sandpaper, abraded at the skin on her torso. This is it, she thought, this is her exit. Although not a religious woman, she pulled her hands together, and muttered what little prayer she could.

“Please, God, if you’re there. Let me die. Should your kingdom be real, let me enter it, as a servant to your will. These dark forces do not let them confine me for eternity. For in life, I am frightened, but in death, I wish to be free and unafraid.”

Her head thumped against the floor, around which a small puddle of blood formed.

Yet, despite her tenacity, her will to die, her prayers had gone unanswered. She awoke, chained to a cross. The links impressed in her skin, with streams of blood cascading down her side. “Please,” she thought once more, “kill me, God, before this ghastly service is complete.” She could hear the grinding of a gear, not far off, beyond the walls of her room. She let her eyes shut, clinging desperately to the doctrine of death.

The door in the floor swung open, and the crucifix fell at a blistering speed. It must’ve fallen a hundred feet before it stopped suddenly, the impetus ripping the skin from her frame. And there, dangling like a grim chandelier, the essence of their ceremony– their oblation– complete.