The One Who Endures by Patrick Spiker (howl and other poems .txt) 📕

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“Look at you, Will. You’re standing there punching a wall like it’s going to break if you hit it long enough. And you’re not even bleeding. Sweet Jesus, you really can’t see that we’re changing, can you?”

But he could. Ever since Derek’s energy had been fed into them, Will began to feel more alert, stronger, more confident. And Marta was right: he had

been punching the wall, hard enough that there should have been cuts on his knuckles from the stone. Instead, his hand was slightly red, nothing more.

They were

changing. And it scared him more than words could describe.

He sank to the floor next to Marta and said as much.

She still wouldn’t look at him. “We shouldn’t use that tunnel.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because he put it there. Onon. He did this, and why do you think so? He wants us to go in there.”

“But I don’t want to be in this room anymore. I don’t want to sit on this ground anymore. I don’t want Derek’s body laying right there

, looking at me.”

“How do we know that Onon didn’t make that hole just so we could go through it and into something even worse?”

“Worse than this? Are you kidding me? Look around you, Marta. We’ve lost them. Do you want to be here when Onon comes back?”

“I...”

“Do you?”

She shoved him hard, and he caught himself on his hands. “Screw you, Will! You’re just falling for more tricks. This entire place is one big trick. There’s no escape, none at all. Whatever we got from Derek and Anna...it’s tainted. It’s making us weird.”

A rush of anger stripped Will’s composure. He lunged forward and grabbed Marta by her shoulders. She struggled, but his greater weight carried them down, and he pinned her wrists and legs with his own weight.

“Listen to me. Listen!”

But she wasn’t listening. She was thrashing and twisting her head, as if she didn’t recognize him and thought Onon was holding her down.

“Marta, stop it! What’s wrong with you? It’s me, Will. I’m not going to hurt you!”

She stopped, met his gaze, and went limp. A pitiful sob escaped her; he could feel her body shaking.

“Fine,” she whispered. “I’ll go down the fucking tunnel and when we’re trapped inside I’ll tell you ‘I fucking told you so’ and then you’ll feel like a royal fucking asshole.”

Marta had never used such strong language before. She was always the calm one, finding a way out of a conflict by low tones and a few well-pointed stares. That she had cursed three times in one outburst spoke volumes to how frightened she was, and Will couldn’t think of anything to say. He stared at her in surprise.

At the same time, he was gripped with a desire so profound he cried out. Suddenly all he could think about was the feel of Marta’s skin beneath his, the way her small limbs and torso shook with her sobs, how her underwear was almost worn in two. He saw her tears and he wanted to lick them off her face. He wanted to bite her lip, draw blood, bite her breasts as well, and he wanted her to bite him in return. He took his right hand, which held her wrist, and brought it to his mouth. Opening wide, sucking in a breath, he trailed his lips along the dirty length of her forearm, quivering with pleasure at the tangy sensation of sweat he sucked from her skin.

He had just jerked her other arm up and had his mouth over her palm when the feelings passed. The taste of Marta’s sweat and blood was overwhelming.

Will tumbled off her, jarring the wire inside him.

He scratched at his lips and spat, trying to be rid of the sourness. What was worse than the actual taste was the vague stirring of desire deep within, not fully perceived but strong enough to get his attention. It was a duality: he knew it was wrong, horrible

, but a small part of him wanted to continue sucking and biting her skin.

He turned to her. She was still on her back, eyes wide, staring at him.

“I’m...I’m sorry,” he said, spitting again. “I don’t know...oh my God...”

She said nothing, but got to her knees and started crawling away.

“Where are you going?” he called.

But it was obvious: she was entering the tunnel. He was forced to follow when the wire slid across the dirt, in danger of being pulled tight. Shambling on all fours, still trying to be rid of the repugnant, sweet taste, he passed through the opening and onto a floor that was not smooth like the chamber, but rough and hard.

She stopped not ten feet inside and let her head fall back against the wall. Will came up beside her, but remained a short distance away. He was afraid that if he touched her at all, those unwanted urges would return, and this time he wouldn’t be able to control them.

“Why did you go?” he asked. “You didn’t want to before.”

“I had to get you out of there,” she said. “You were...changing, and I...I didn’t want to be sitting with you anymore. I wanted to be moving.”

“I don’t know what happened back there. I just snapped for some reason.”

“That’s not the worst of it. When you were on top of me, doing those things...I liked it

.”

“What?”

“I felt this wave of pleasure, not quite sexual, but something just as strong. I wanted you to do it. Oh, Christ, Will, what’s happening to us?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t reply, just continued on through the tunnel.

Soon the light from the chamber fell behind, and familiar-yet-awful darkness surrounded them. Will couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, and the only reason he knew Marta was still ahead was the sound of her knees and hands scooting across the stone.

The tunnel curved left, then right, and soon Will was lost. For all he knew, the passage snaked around the chamber they had just left, winding them up only to deposit them back at their starting point.

Marta would not speak to him, so he tried to occupy his mind with thoughts of happier times. But now, everything seemed tainted by incongruous danger. No memory he relived was as it had happened.

He became so lost in his polluted thoughts that he ran into Marta, who had stopped crawling.

“What’s wrong? Why are we stopping?”

Instead of replying, she groped at his arms and chest, found his shoulders, and shoved him against the wall.

“What...?” he asked, but then she was atop him.

Her hand slipped down his stomach and into his boxers; she squeezed. At the same time, her mouth was over his, but they were not kissing. Their open lips remained apart by a feather’s width, and they both inhaled. Will’s entire body went rigid as he took in the supple length of this woman on him, her needy hands.

Marta growled, a sound of intense need, and they both realized at once what they were doing. Her breath was very unpleasant, and the hand in his boxers felt nothing like sex; rather, it was a primal response to something less than human. It was as if, by engaging in these bizarre acts, they were slowly degrading from man into a lower form of existence, driven by powerful physical urges.

She slid to the ground beside him, breathing hard, and the wire in Will’s stomach was warmer than normal as he, too, was breathless.

“We should keep going,” Marta said when they calmed.

He could hear the embarrassment in her voice, the shame.

“Let’s go,” he said.

7

After what seemed like hours in the tunnel, crawling to an end that didn’t yet feel real, Will saw light. He dismissed it, at first, as just more variations on the winding, crawling shapes that he saw all the time in the blackness. But it didn’t disappear. In fact, it grew larger. He urged Marta faster.

The tunnel was so long that it was like travelling miles and miles underground, from one city to the next, but there was comfort in the fact that Onon hadn’t materialized during their time here, nor had the wires done anything but grow warm on occasion.

The light came from a small doorway, a rectangular slab of steel perfectly fitted into the stone. Even the tiny crack around its perimeter was blinding, after having spent so long without any brightness at all.

Marta couldn’t find a handle or knob, and she moved back to let Will have a turn. The steel was warm to his touch.

They had come so far that his arms could barely hold up his body. But when he sat on his haunches and instructed Marta to do the same, they kicked the door twice and it swung open with a creak of rusty hinges.

There was a room beyond, but it was too bright; they had to lay on the ground, facing away, and slowly acclimate their eyes to the new ambience.

They stepped out of the tunnel into a square room that was both welcoming and disturbing. Perhaps fifteen feet wide, less than eight tall, it was lit by three large candles in golden sconces on the right wall. There was a rickety wooden table in the center and a blackboard—could that be right? A blackboard?—on the opposite wall, upon which were affixed several photographs.

After escaping a room of terrible power, this new place was so comparatively ordinary that Will thought he must be missing some hidden terror lurking in the corners.

The table held three objects. The first was a black cell phone. The second was a pair of sunglasses with a cracked lens. The third was Will’s gun belt with his .22 revolver.

He ran and snatched the gun from the belt. Clutching it to his chest, he turned to look at Marta.

She stood by the tunnel, arms crossed over her chest. She looked worse than before. Dirtier. Skinnier, as if her body had feasted upon itself during their trek. Her legs were trembling.

She saw Will staring, fidgeted, and moved toward the table, not meeting his gaze. He turned and focused on the blackboard.

She was practically naked, as was he, but that was not the cause of their averted stares. They were both hesitant to interact because their primal urges had increased during their trip. No words were necessary; they could tell by the half-frown-half-excited look on their faces whenever they were close.

The wire slid around the floor as they walked, a tether preventing escape.

It was indeed a blackboard on the wall, a small model about four feet in width. There were a eight pictures taped to it in vertical rows of two. Each depicted a different person, but all had similar dirt-, blood-, and tear-streaked faces. They were all young men, and all had expressions of almost trance-like intensity.

For reasons he could not describe, the photos terrified him.

He glanced back at Marta and said, “I don’t like this place.”

She murmured her agreement as she moved to the far wall, feeling along its length for any hidden passageways.

The gun in his hand felt useless. It was too heavy, too complex. In his current state, it was doubtful that he could hold