Thanatos' Ashes

Chapter 2: Portent

   Chapter 2: Portent

Warning: Slight implications of adultery and infidelity.

  Allan could feel his solid revetment of composure gradually crumbles away as they ventured through the seemingly endless hall.

    At a glance, Rachel could recognize the glint of anxiety seeping into his pale blue orbs and perceive the unmistakable tension looming over his movements. Her hands itched to hold his.

  The quickening crescendo composed of her frantic heartbeats, rapid footsteps and hyperventilation has reached an alarming velocity, threatening to devour the last shreds of her sanity.

  Her body was trembling uncontrollably, her knees quivering violently, on the blink of collapsing because of vertigo. Her lungs, depraved of air, was silently screeching as her breaths grew increasingly shallow. Inside her stomach, a maelstrom was raging, the revolting claws of the monster ripping at her throat, desperately attempting to crawl its way out. She felt like vomiting.

   She glanced at Allan once more, a congenital reaction, implicature of the desire to seek comfort from her husband.

   No, she told herself, not yet. She had to complete what she had commenced, she had to witness the fruits of her endeavour and sufferings. She could not manifest any form of weakness now. The time has come. The truth is at hand. Nothing could prevent her from acknowledging that truth, the truth that she had taken such resolution to nurture.

                                            XXXXXX

     She remembered the commodious room, with sombre, heavy curtains hanging over anchored windows, impeding any noise from departing the suite.

    The only available source of light present in the chamber is that produced from various candles surrounding the gargantuan bed situated at the very middle of the room, atop a wooden platform, ascending from the floor. The candles distributed a pungent odour that dispersed within the ample but incarcerating compartment. The arrangement of the candles displayed an elaborate pattern, though at a glance, not at all a desultory, haphazard or random composition. One could easily mistaken the intricate arrangement of candles served as an embellishment to some form of sacrosanct ritual performed on the spacious bed.

    Rachel remembered the intense aroma emanating from the candles. She remembered how the aroma enmesh her in its tanginess, forcefully invaded her mouth and nostrils, ruthlessly and relentlessly violating her lungs. She remembered how she abhorred the scent, loathed the way it tenaciously clung to her like repugnant vermin, like vicious vultures, feeding on carrion, as the atrocious odour feasts on her...

    And Rachel remembered the man. He was Head of the Registrar General's Department, or some agent sent by the Government's Health Centre, she really could not recall, and it did not pose as a matter of importance to her. She had, however, remembered his astringent, heated breaths. They were not unbearable, nor could she imagine the possible existence of a senior Government Official who lacked certain understandings of hygienic principles, but they, too fractured the walls of her comfort zone. She had remembered his hands, those vile hands, roaming her body. And she remembered having reminisced at that moment about Allan's hands, she remembered how gentle they were, in comparison to those oleaginous, rough hands clumsily groping its way in a most lewd and obscene fashion. And she also remembered his tongue. The soggy chunk of flesh incessantly lapping at her skin. And she remembered how she abhorred the sound of his tongue on her flesh. She remembered how she envisioned cleaving those repellent hands of his, she visualized mincing his unholy tongue, and she remembered imagining his screams...